<p>State Impact reported that attorneys for PennEnvironment & the Clean Air Council in a federal air pollution case against US Steel said told Judge W Scott Hardy of US District Court judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh that the three-month loss of pollution controls at the company’s Clairton Coke Works after a 2018 fire was a complete failure by the company to follow clean air laws and argued the company should be charged with over 12,000 violations. They said “It is so incredibly egregious and severe. It could not have led to this many permit violations had it not been a complete failure to implement mandatory clean air act limitations from three of the largest polluting sources in Allegheny County.”</p><p>The plaintiffs are asking to find the company guilty of committing over 12,000 violations of the Clean Air Act and to order US Steel to implement the necessary upgrades so the plant will never again go without air pollution controls.</p><p>However, US Steel’s attorneys argued that the plaintiffs inflated the number of violations the company should be subject to, and questioned whether the damages the plaintiffs claimed could be traced to its plants. The company’s attorneys also argued that the court should reject the plaintiffs’ request for a court-appointed review of US Steel’s facilities and a third-party auditor to ensure the plant complies with its federal air quality permits in the future. </p><p>The judge is expected to make a determination on the number of alleged violations that US Steel committed during the pollution control outage. After that, the case could move to a penalty phase</p><p>The fire started when a corroded sprinkler pipe fell onto an air compressor in a pollution control room and led to months of bad air in Pittsburgh’s Mon Valley. Until pollution controls were restored, on April 5, 2019, the plant flared untreated coke oven gas, resulting in increased emissions of sulfur dioxide, a lung irritant, by 4,500 percent. Studies conducted since showed that the fire and resulting air pollution worsened breathing for asthma patients and increased the number of emergency room visits for asthma.</p>
<p>State Impact reported that attorneys for PennEnvironment & the Clean Air Council in a federal air pollution case against US Steel said told Judge W Scott Hardy of US District Court judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh that the three-month loss of pollution controls at the company’s Clairton Coke Works after a 2018 fire was a complete failure by the company to follow clean air laws and argued the company should be charged with over 12,000 violations. They said “It is so incredibly egregious and severe. It could not have led to this many permit violations had it not been a complete failure to implement mandatory clean air act limitations from three of the largest polluting sources in Allegheny County.”</p><p>The plaintiffs are asking to find the company guilty of committing over 12,000 violations of the Clean Air Act and to order US Steel to implement the necessary upgrades so the plant will never again go without air pollution controls.</p><p>However, US Steel’s attorneys argued that the plaintiffs inflated the number of violations the company should be subject to, and questioned whether the damages the plaintiffs claimed could be traced to its plants. The company’s attorneys also argued that the court should reject the plaintiffs’ request for a court-appointed review of US Steel’s facilities and a third-party auditor to ensure the plant complies with its federal air quality permits in the future. </p><p>The judge is expected to make a determination on the number of alleged violations that US Steel committed during the pollution control outage. After that, the case could move to a penalty phase</p><p>The fire started when a corroded sprinkler pipe fell onto an air compressor in a pollution control room and led to months of bad air in Pittsburgh’s Mon Valley. Until pollution controls were restored, on April 5, 2019, the plant flared untreated coke oven gas, resulting in increased emissions of sulfur dioxide, a lung irritant, by 4,500 percent. Studies conducted since showed that the fire and resulting air pollution worsened breathing for asthma patients and increased the number of emergency room visits for asthma.</p>
