Inside the Carnegie Library in Braddock, Pennsylvania, Ron Ferchak explained what a hot strip mill does.
Imagine an assembly line, three football fields long. You put in a steel slab on one 40 feet long, and out the other end comes a very thin, very long sheet.
“It basically starts out as a nine-inch thick rectangle,” Ferchak said. “At the end, it turns into a steel coil, a 16th of an inch thick, and about 7,000 feet long.”
By the end, it looks like a big roll of tape–only this one weighs 40 tons.
“Basically, it looks like just a big donut,” Ferchak said.
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Ferchak was in the library as part of a U.S. Steel open house in mid-July to unveil its latest investment – a new hot strip mill at the Edgar Thomson plant, a few blocks away. Ferchak, as director of U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works project execution office, is overseeing the project.
The project is part of a makeover the company is getting from its new owners, Nippon Steel of Japan, which bought U.S. Steel last year. Nippon pledged $2.5 billion in investments in U.S. Steel’s Pittsburgh-area plants.
That includes the new hot strip mill, which will cost over $1 billion and replace an aging operation at the company’s nearby Irvin Works in West Mifflin.
Right now, the company makes steel slabs at the Edgar Thomson plant and ships them by rail about seven miles to its current hot strip mill at the Irvin Works. Then it has to re-heat the slabs to press them into coils. This upgrade will cut out unnecessary steps and energy use, Ferchak said.
“They have five reheat furnaces up at Irvin; this will only have two,” said Ferchak. “[It will have] much higher efficiency, much higher productivity.”
The project will help U.S. Steel sell higher grades of steel, like the kinds used in cars and trucks.
U.S. Steel’s plants in the area play a big part in the local economy. They employ around 3,000 union steelworkers. But they also pollute. U.S. Steel’s operations are the biggest source of air pollution in Allegheny County, according to state data.
Many of these emissions stem from the company’s reliance on the traditional coal-based steelmaking process, which starts with the company’s coke works in Clairton.
There, coal is converted into coke, a key steelmaking material. Coke is combined with iron ore in a blast furnace at the Edgar Thomson plant to make iron. The iron goes through another process to make steel.
Environmental groups have called on the company to reduce emissions by moving away from coal, and using a process called “direct reducted iron,” which replaces coal with natural gas or hydrogen. It’s a technique the company will employ at a new facility it’s planning to build in Arkansas.
But U.S. Steel officials say that method can’t replicate the higher-grade steel its customers want.
“We have a very diligent approach to environmental compliance, and we also are looking at continuous improvement constantly,” said Matt DeLibero, an environmental manager at the company.
The company said one example of this is the new hot strip mill, slated to begin production in 2029. It will have lower emissions rates than the mill it’s replacing, which first went into service in 1938.
The project should lower particulate pollution from hot strip mill operations from 25 tons per year to 22, according to documents submitted by the company to regulators. But CO2 emissions, the main cause of global warming, could also increase significantly.
Carbon emissions could increase by 750,000 tons per year, the equivalent of adding 150,000 cars on the road, according to EPA estimates. According to the company, the reported increase is due to the fact that the emissions estimates provided to regulators are based on “maximum potential emissions under worst‑case operating assumptions.”
DeLibero said that the company is trying to improve its environmental performance.
“If you look at the performance over time, it is gradually getting better incrementally year over year,” he said.
Groups say Nippon Steel investments will perpetuate coal and air pollution in the Mon Valley
Community opinion divided
For many Mon Valley residents, progress on air pollution isn’t coming fast enough.
Olivia Davidson, of North Braddock, has grown up near the mill.
“It’s been really difficult. I don’t think [air pollution has] impacted me directly, but seeing how it impacts the people around me, I think, affects me a lot,” Davidson said.
Children living near U.S. Steel operations and other industrial plants in Allegheny County had nearly triple the nationwide asthma rate, according to one recent study.
The company has paid over $50 million in fines over the last 5 years for air pollution violations. Davidson, who’s 18, said she feels let down by governments that are supposed to protect people from air pollution.
“It just kind of feels like it’s something that you deal with,” she said. “Because it feels like they’re not gonna do anything about it. It kind of feels like no one cares.”
Robert Ketcham sees it differently. He’s a photographer who lives in Braddock.
Ten years ago, he moved to within a few blocks of the Edgar Thomson plant, knowing that he would be living near a steel mill.
“There’s some dust now and then and maybe a sulfur smell, but it’s never anything that has been overwhelming,” Ketcham said.
He is in favor of the upgrades to the Edgar Thomson plant, which began operations back in 1875, because he thinks this will keep U.S. Steel in the region.
“Western Pennsylvania, the Mon Valley and Braddock in particular need to have U.S. Steel here to keep it viable,” he said.
