We barely finished talking about Clairton.
The Tribune-Review spent months visiting the city and talking to the people in the wake of the Christmas Eve fire at U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works that shuttered pollution control systems for 2½ weeks.
It came together in a Sunday feature with the stories of locals ready to move away from homes they loved because of air that burned like asphalt. The artwork showed homes covered in darkness on a sunny spring day as the Clairton Plant pumped clouds of smoke in the background.
The story asked questions about the area and the future as residents and officials deal with pollution at the same time U.S. Steel has announced a $1 billion investment in the Mon Valley Works, including a cogeneration facility at Clairton.
And the morning after that centerpiece ran, Clairton had another fire.
Fire shouldn’t be too surprising. It is a factory where coal is baked at high temperatures. But this was an electrical fire that shut down control rooms. The thing they control? The equipment that limits pollution. The same equipment that was offline after the Christmas fire. The equipment that didn’t run while the Allegheny County Health Department noted sulfur dioxide numbers rising above normal limits.
Both fires didn’t stop production. The coke still baked. The coke oven gas, which is repurposed or sold, was still produced. So was the sulfur dioxide. Only the pollution control equipment was shut down. It was back in service within a day of the second fire, and ACHD reported no increase in sulfur dioxide.
The plants are a crucial part of the local economy. But how do you balance a paycheck against things like low property values, waning communities and, yes, the colorless gas that burns the eyes and back of the throat?
Producing coke is critical to U.S. Steel’s ability to produce steel. That’s not disputed.
But the people are critical to producing the coke. And people shouldn’t breathe sulfur dioxide.
As the fires seem to be a regular hazard — a consequence of doing business like a flat tire for a truck driver — it seems like U.S. Steel needs to find a better jack to keep in the trunk.
