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Environmental groups in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Alabama filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court against the Environmental Protection Agency over a new rule regulating air emissions from coke ovens.
Coke ovens convert coal to coke for use in the steelmaking process. According to the EPA, there are eleven active coke-making facilities in the U.S., the largest of which is the U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works near Pittsburgh.
To create the rule, EPA looked at two sources of emissions at coke plants: the stacks and the batteries.
At the stacks, EPA reviewed both the risks and the technology for hazardous air emissions. However, for the coke oven batteries, the EPA only did a technology review. The coalition of environmental and health groups, including PennFuture and Clean Air Council, is suing to force the agency to also undertake a risk review for coke oven batteries.
“The lawsuit is asking for the court to recognize that what EPA did was unlawful and insufficient,” said Tosh Sagar, senior attorney at Earthjustice, which represents the groups in the lawsuit filed Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
They want the EPA to do more to protect nearby communities from hazardous pollutants emitted from coke oven batteries, such as benzene, arsenic, lead and mercury.
“These are things that cause cancer and learning disabilities,” Sagar said. “EPA itself says that the stuff coming out of Clairton is ‘amongst the most toxic of all air pollutants.”
“It’s not too much to ask that EPA do what the law requires and set standards that protect these people,” Sagar said.
The EPA last reviewed the health risks from coke oven battery emissions in 2005. It looked at five facilities, but four are no longer in operation, according to Sagar.
“They’ve never reviewed the risks posed by the coke ovens that remain in operation,” he said. “That includes Clairton,” which is by far the largest source of benzene and other pollutants in Allegheny County.
The new rule requires fenceline monitoring for benzene and a demonstration that there are zero leaking oven doors, as well as oven pressure monitoring and a new equation for estimating oven leaks.
The EPA declined to comment because of the lawsuit.
Read more from our partners, The Allegheny Front.
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