The Case Against a New Coke Plant for Pittsburgh
by Walter Goldburg, GASP Board Member
If Mayor Murphy has his way, we will soon have a new coke plant on the old LTV site in view of downtown of Pittsburgh. The former LTV coke works closed earlier year. According to the proposed construction permit, the new plant will be 50 percent larger than the former one and will emit roughly the same amount of dust and sulfur dioxide (SO2). The new plant operates quite differently than the standard byproduct plant like the ones at Clairton and on Neville Island. Yet the builder, Sun Coal Company, is asking that the new facility be permitted as a “minor modification” of the old one, so that it can escape the more stringent emission limitations that would be imposed on it if it were designated as a “New Source” or a “Major Modification”.
An advantage of the new Sun design is that it incinerates the cancer-causing chemicals in the coal and thus should not generate the characteristic coke oven smell that we Pittsburghers know so well. Occupying 200 acres, the Sun plant will employ roughly 200 workers, i.e. about one job per acre.
Make no mistake about it; a coke plant, even a non-recovery plant is a dirty operation. Walk around for a few hours in the Sun plant in East Chicago, Indiana, and your shirt collar will be blackened. This plant generates noise that can be heard blocks away. No wonder that a group Hazelwood residents is doing everything it can to stop this project. This plant will surely bring back the haze that we finally escaped this summer when the old LTV plant shut down.
Suppose the new plant exceeds its allowable emissions, what will happen? If the Health Department follows its time honored practice, the plant will not be asked to cease coke production or even cut it back. Instead a minuscule fine will be imposed.
Even though the dust fallout is annoying and contributes to our smoky city image, this type of dirt is not our greatest worry; rather it is the fine dust that enters our lungs and makes our skies hazy. These tiny particles aggravate asthma in the susceptible and kill the young and the old at a disturbingly high rate. This is why the federal government has recently tightened its fine particulate standard. As to SO2, a recent court order is compelling the US Environmental Protection Agency to revisit this pollution problem, since it appears that the present SO2 air quality standard is too lax to protect public health. The large sulfur dioxide emissions from the proposed Sun plant were noted above.
In an unguarded moment the Mayor told GASP that he would welcome the Sun plant even if it generated a mere ten jobs. But surely he appreciates that the presence of such a large and dirty industrial operation is likely to repel clean businesses that may want to locate near the Pitt and CMU technology research centers. This could adversely effect our ability to retain the graduates of our five colleges and universities. The pollution from this plant may also hamper Mr. Murphy’s own efforts at rejuvenating this city. I have in mind here projects like his Nine Mile Run development and commercial and residential plans for the South side of the Mon river, directly across from the LTV plant.
For a couple of hundred jobs do we really want to risk stunting major economic growth here for the fifty year lifetime of this plant? Are the city’s prospects so bleak that we must abandon hope of capitalizing on the beauty of our rivers and the brightness of our skies?
Mayor Murphy had it right when he wrote in 1996 “..we [Pittsburghers] are in need of initiatives that will create economic growth and middle class private sector jobs.” If this coke plant comes to Pittsburgh, his dream for a brighter future - and ours - may go up in smoke.