Washington, D.C. – A coalition of clean air advocates filed a federal lawsuit against the EPA
yesterday demanding stronger rules to reduce hazardous air pollution – including cancer-
causing benzene – from steel industry coke oven plants across the country.
Coke oven plants, located in Western Pennsylvania, Northern Indiana, Alabama and a dozen
other locations in the U.S., superheat coal in a kiln without oxygen to produce a carbon-dense
coal byproduct that is used in iron and steel manufacturing.
Because these plants release large amounts of air pollution, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency on July 5 imposed new regulations meant to control their hazardous emissions,
including benzene, mercury, lead, and arsenic.
The Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice, Clean Air Council, Sierra Club, and PANIC filed
a lawsuit challenging the new rules in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit because the regulations did not go far enough to control benzene, exposing
communities downwind from coke oven plants to dangerous levels of this carcinogen.
“EPA failed to impose strong enough standards to adequately protect the public, and failed to
require industry to install modern pollution control technologies that are readily available,” said
Haley Lewis, attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project. “The public health risk is
unacceptable, and so we are asking the D.C. Circuit Court to intervene.”
Tosh Sagar, Earthjustice attorney, said: “For decades, the EPA has ignored setting coke oven
standards, allowing cancer-causing pollutants to harm communities in Pennsylvania, Alabama,
Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. These communities have suffered enough. We’re urging the D.C.
Circuit to force the EPA to finally do its job and protect them.”
Alex Bomstein, Clean Air Council Executive Director, said: “Pennsylvania steel communities
have lived with dangerous air quality for generations. That needs to end. All of us deserve the
cleanest air for the health of our families and our communities, no matter where we live.”
Among the facilities that would be impacted by the rule is the largest coke works in North
America, the U.S. Steel Clairton plant southeast of Pittsburgh, where air pollution monitors
have detected dangerously high levels of benzene.
Other coke works where unhealthy levels of benzene have been detected include Indiana’s
Cleveland Cliffs Burns Harbor plant, beside Lake Michigan; and ABC Coke in Birmingham,
Alabama.
For a copy of the EPA regulations that are being challenged, click here.
For a copy of the lawsuit filed yesterday, click here.
The Environmental Integrity Project and coalition of allied groups sent EPA a detailed critique of
the new hazardous air pollution regulations, which you can read here.
