Seasons Greetings from our friends at US Steel.Submitted by Tomofpittsburgh t3_z25wu7 in pittsburgh
Ordinary_Pain1848 t1_ixfhy4c wrote
Reply to comment by chuckie512 in Seasons Greetings from our friends at US Steel. by Tomofpittsburgh
If you have a better idea on how to curtail emissions from the 17 PM2.5 contributors in the Mon Valley may I suggest you apply for a job with ACHD. They seem quite confident that things are moving in a positive direction.
https://www.alleghenycounty.us/News/2021/Health-Department-2021/6442473822.aspx
Copied straight from the ACHD website, with link below:
“Note: On April 15, 2022, the Allegheny County Health Department learned that for the second year in a row, the county has met federal air quality standards for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) at all eight air quality monitors. This table shows the highest air quality concentrations recorded at any site over the most recent three years (based on maximum three-year averages), given by pollutant and averaging duration.”
https://www.alleghenycounty.us/Health-Department/Programs/Air-Quality/Monitored-Data.aspx
This is the 2nd time ever, prior to 2020 that these monitors have met the federal standard since their inception in 1999. Also of note is that only the Liberty monitor in all those years prior had prevented the county from reaching those standards. If things are as bad people claim they are, achieving such a goal would not be happening.
chuckie512 t1_ixfinqx wrote
Yeah, my suggestion is for us steel to move into the 21 century and use electric arc mills, or shut down.
We pay more in excess healthcare than USS provides to the community. We could save money as a community paying all the steel workers to retire.
[deleted] t1_ixfsxm9 wrote
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Ordinary_Pain1848 t1_ixfkt6w wrote
If it was that easy, USS would have shut Clairton and the corresponding plants years ago. The reality is that these 3 Mon Valley plants are US Steel’s cheapest cost per ton producer of steel in the company’s portfolio. Even cheaper then the new state of the art Big River Steel at Osceola, AR.
It being cheaper to pay for the steel workers healthcare by forcing the plants to close vs it being open is not realistic. Take away the tax base Clairton Coke Works provides and would the city be able to survive without falling back into Act 47 dependency from the state?
Braddock is still in Act 47 dependency even with Edgar Thomson Plant operating in it’s city limits. What is going to replace this enormous tax base? Our air is “cleaner” now. But our local economies tank to levels not seen since likely the 1980’s and big steel’s permanent collapse. How many of these former steel mill towns have been able to recover 40 years later?
Clairton Mill closes, backstreet burger probably closes. speedway closes. It’s a ripple effect that goes beyond just the plant itself. These businesses were not put there to sustain just off of the city itself.
Are the local communities going to pay for the railroad workers retirement too because the mill was forced to shut down? They were dependent on the mill to make a living, too. Local owner operator truck drivers delivering products or hauling products out of the mills?
As much disdain it may bring you to see these plants operational, they are a critical part of the Mon Valley’s ecosystem. You can’t just replace 3,000 well paying jobs overnight.
chuckie512 t1_ixfl4g7 wrote
>The reality is that these 3 Mon Valley plants are US Steel’s cheapest cost per ton producer of steel in the company’s portfolio
Because we're subsidizing them with our lives.
Is a couple dozen jobs worth giving children decades long health issues? If we paid them out to retire, they'd still be in the tax base.
alwaysboopthesnoot t1_ixfxahb wrote
The federal government already pays ie:we the taxpayers already pay for railroad workers’ retirement. https://rrb.gov/
There is already a special, entirely separate system with special, extra coverage.
Should we also have to pay for the cleanup costs that the EPA and ACHD now pays to do, plus pay for the catastrophic medical care for everyone in the valley who suffers, after private companies privatize their profits but make taxpayers pay for their losses, and then take their own profits and close things down, and bolt?
Various_Tackle3069 t1_ixh32qg wrote
If your defending the US Steel plant in clairton you can fuck right off - shut down the plant until they install adequate scrubbers it’s not complicated.
Ordinary_Pain1848 t1_ixh4vzm wrote
You can try to ignore the cold hard facts all you’d like, doesn’t change anything. Clairton Coke Works is not even the No.1 Polluter in Allegheny County according to ACHD themselves.
That plant provides a shit load of well paying jobs that supports a lot of families. 1-3 batteries are shutting down in the spring anyways. People won’t be happy until it’s gone and another EPA superfund brown field eyesore for people to bitch about.
chuckie512 t1_ixhhnxw wrote
So you're saying that US Steel won't even bother to clean up their mess and we have to pay for that too?
They're so stupidly subsidized they can do something for our community, like not kill people.
Ordinary_Pain1848 t1_ixhkfbv wrote
No, my point is that no matter what the fuck US Steel does people will always say it’s “not good enough.”
SamPost t1_ixitlnf wrote
Weekly violations of a 40 year old law that almost every other company in the US manages to comply with is "not good enough". Let's start there.
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