Three environmental organizations say the Allegheny County Health Department is illegally allowing Allegheny Ludlum’s Brackenridge steel mill to significantly increase its emissions of air pollutants, including hazardous substances.
After reviewing a proposed federal operating permit for the facility, the organizations say that because the steelmaker’s draft permit would set limits for emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and airborne particles at two or three times current levels. As a result, the health department must require the facility to meet more stringent federal emissions controls and monitoring requirements for new and expanded industrial sources to prevent deterioration of air quality, the groups say.
“We think the draft permit should be revised to comply with Clean Air Act requirements for New Source Review,” said Patton Dycus, an attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project, which, along with the Group Against Smog and Pollution and the Clean Air Council, submitted critical comments on the county’s draft permit.
“The biggest problem with the permit is that Allegheny Ludlum’s electric arc furnaces aren’t meeting existing permit limits,” Mr. Dycus said, “and the health department is preparing to raise those limits much higher.”
He said the facility should also be considered a major source for hazardous air pollutants, based on the actual emissions cited in the draft permit, and therefore subject to tighter regulation and monitoring. The groups, in their written comments on the permit, said the health department has “illegally” increased the emissions limits and must “remove the invalid revised limits from the permit.”
But Jim Kelly, the health department’s acting deputy director, said that although actual emissions from the plant along the Allegheny River are much lower than those listed in the proposed permit, the higher emissions allowances are required by law, based on environmental rules or engineering formulas governing the plant’s 90 individual emissions sources.
“If we go below that with limits, we open ourselves to legal liability,” he said. “All the permitted emission limits are higher than the actual emissions in this permit, and you can find that and have this argument in every single permit for every single facility.”
Mr. Kelly said incidence of exceeding the nitrogen oxide emissions limits, cited by Mr. Dycus and contained in a 2002 installation permit for the electric arc furnaces, have been “resolved.”
Allegheny Ludlum, now part of Allegheny Technologies Inc., which first applied for its Title V permit in 1995, is one of 32 major industrial sources of air pollution in Allegheny County, and among the 15 for which the health department failed to issue permits within the 18-month time frame required by the federal Clean Air Act. The permits are required for a “major source” that emits or has the potential to annually emit 100 tons of any air pollutant, 10 tons of any hazardous air pollutant or 25 tons of a combination of hazardous pollutants.
It’s legal for companies to operate under terms of their old permits while awaiting permit renewal.
Allegheny Ludlum’s draft permit would limit its emissions of nitrogen oxides, a primary component of unhealthy smog, to 1,027 tons a year, well above the 289-ton-a-year average from 2000 through 2014 calculated by the environmental groups and the 215 tons the company actually emitted last year, according to the health department.
Carbon monoxide emissions averaged 394 tons a year from 2000 through 2014, the environmental groups calculated, but the draft permit authorizes annual emissions of up to 1,117 tons. And the permit would allow sulfur dioxide emissions totaling more than 80 tons a year, an increase the environmental groups say should trigger more stringent monitoring and controls under the Clean Air Act’s “New Source Review” and “Prevention of Significant Deterioration” programs.
Dan Greenfield, an Allegheny Ludlum/ATI spokesman, declined to comment substantively on the draft permit or answer questions about the higher pollution limits it contains.
“We’re working with the Allegheny County Health Department in the permitting process and it would be inappropriate to discuss it further,” he said. “We are hoping for a satisfactory outcome.”
The 30-day public comment period on the draft permit closed Oct. 29, and the health department denied requests by all three environmental organizations to extend the comment period. The Clean Air Council has appealed that decision.
The health department is reviewing the comments it received. A decision on the permit is not expected until early next year.
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.
First Published: November 25, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
