U.S. Steel facing new lawsuit over Mon Valley facilities
Environmentalists filed a lawsuit against U.S. Steel on Monday, accusing it of breaking federal law by failing to disclose months of hazardous emissions following a Christmas Eve fire and then another in mid-June that destroyed equipment at its Clairton Coke Works.
Attorneys from the Environmental Integrity Project are representing the Clean Air Council in the lawsuit it brought in the U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act.
Poor air quality in the weeks after the December fire prompted the Allegheny County Health Department to warn people in many nearby towns in the county – including Forward Township, which sits across the river from Monongahela, New Eagle and Union Township – to limit outdoor activity.
Adam Kron, senior attorney with EIP, said members of the public have a right to know what’s in their air.
The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring the Pittsburgh-based company to comply with CERCLA, also known as the Superfund law.
“This information isn’t available elsewhere,” Kron said. “It has to come from U.S. Steel.”
U.S. Steel spokeswoman Meaghan Cox said the company doesn’t discuss pending litigation as a matter of policy.
“Environmental stewardship and safety remain core values at U.S. Steel, where we spend approximately $100 million annually on environmental compliance across the Mon Valley Works,” she added in an email.
She also pointed to $1 billion in planned upgrades that “will improve environmental performance and energy conservation” at its Mon Valley plants.
The case is the latest of U.S. Steel’s legal problems related to its operations in the Mon Valley.
In April, the Clean Air Council and PennEnvironment filed a federal lawsuit under the Clean Air Act over alleged emissions violations at the company’s Clairton works, the Edgar Thomson Plant in Braddock and the Irvin Plant in West Mifflin in the wake of the fire, which brought down two control rooms that process coke oven gas burned at all three facilities. The Allegheny County Health Department has joined the groups in their lawsuit.
Meanwhile, a draft settlement with the health department over unrelated violations that purportedly occurred at the Clairton works in 2018 and ’19 would require the steelmaker to pay $2.7 million in fines and undertake repairs and other measures to control emissions.
In the new case, the Clean Air Council alleges that U.S. Steel released benzene, a carcinogen; hydrogen sulfide, a respiratory irritant and asphyxiant; and other contaminants as it burned unprocessed gas as fuel or by flaring at the Clairton, West Mifflin and Braddock plants from Dec. 24 until April 4, when U.S. Steel said it had placed the control rooms online again.
The company also did so following a June 16 fire that damaged the same control rooms, the lawsuit claims.
CERCLA requires companies to report releases of hazardous substances above certain levels to the National Response Center for each 24-hour period they occur.
EIP lawyers estimate that following those fires, the facilities emitted amounts of benzene, hydrogen sulfide and other compounds well above the federal standards, but that the company failed to report that information to the center following either fire.
They claim U.S. Steel similarly failed to notify the center on July 5, when an air monitor in Glassport recorded elevated benzene levels “around the same time that cameras recorded significant flaring at the Irvin Plant.”