Nov 3, 2018 3 min read

MONESSEN – The nation’s largest steel producer has invested nearly $1 million this year to upgrade a Monessen coke works that was fined and sued over pollution issues.

In all, ArcelorMittal has spent more than $60 million since 2009 on emissions upgrades and other modernization initiatives at the plant, its division manager, Randy Shelton Sr., said Thursday at a community meeting in a local public school.

“Our environmental performance was something that we were not very proud of,” Shelton said in the Monessen Middle/Senior High School auditorium.

However, he said the company is “very proud of what we’ve accomplished.”

The meeting was required under a consent decree the company reached last year to end a pollution lawsuit filed by the environmental group PennFuture on behalf of local citizens.

The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, alleged a string of problems at the Monessen plant. It accused ArcelorMittal of operating the plant for days or weeks while a key air-pollution control device was out of service. The problem resulted in more than 226 violations of limits for hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. The company also was accused of failure to put a required monitoring device in place and releasing emission levels that were as much as eight times the legal limit.

The consent decree resolved enforcement actions by the U.S. Department of Justice, which represented the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Environmental Protection in the case. ArcelorMittal also agreed to pay a $1.5 million penalty, giving equal portions of that amount to the EPA and DEP.

The meeting Thursday was the first for the company, which plans to hold two more in each of the next two years, Shelton said.

“This is our first dip in the water to talk to you about what goes on at ArcelorMittal,” he said at the meeting, which attracted about a dozen residents to the school.

The coke plant was constructed in the 1940s to support the World War II effort. It’s the last remaining portion of what was once a sprawling, fully integrated mill along the Monongahela River in the Westmoreland County city.

The plant, situated on 45 acres, employs 180 people and produces 350,000 tons of coke a year.

Shelton outlined the process for making coke, a key ingredient in making steel, which requires the sizing of blended coal and baking it in ovens at temperatures as high as 2,400 degrees.

He said ArcelorMittal also has donated $135,000 to the community, having recently given the school district $25,000 to support its science, technology and engineering program.

The coke plant is “succeeding and doing well,” Shelton added.