ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In western Pennsylvania, steel plants are big employers and big polluters. This summer, the Trump administration paused regulations that would have forced the steel industry to curb air pollution. Reid Frazier of the public radio show The Allegheny Front reports on how that move will affect people living nearby.
REID FRAZIER, BYLINE: For years, Dave and Cindy Meckel lived in the town of Glassport, Pennsylvania. They recently moved to a new house 30 miles away. Standing in his new backyard, Dave Meckel explains why they moved.
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DAVE MECKEL: You can take a deep breath and you can smell trees. You take a deep breath in Glassport and you smell hydrogen sulfide, you smell sulfur dioxide.
FRAZIER: That's because their old home was a mile and a half from a U.S. Steel plant. That plant, in the town of Clairton, produces coke, a form of coal used in steelmaking. The plant is the area's largest single source of air pollution - a fact, Cindy Meckel says, was unavoidable.
CINDY MECKEL: Every day, we would have to go out and wipe off the tablecloth, and every day, the paper towel or the cloth was black.
FRAZIER: A few years ago, as part of a public health initiative, the Meckels put up a monitor in their backyard for benzene, a known carcinogen. Their house recorded the highest levels in the neighborhood, similar to levels seen at some industrial plants. Cindy Meckel says the couple knew it was time to leave after three of their dogs died of cancer.
C MECKEL: We just said, it's just a matter of time until...
D MECKEL: We do.
C MECKEL: ...It's us next, you know, that get diagnosed.
FRAZIER: Last year, under former President Joe Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency issued new rules. For the first time, coke plants like Clairton would have been required to monitor for benzene emissions. But in July, the Trump administration paused those rules, saying it wasn't feasible for the industry to comply.
DEBORAH GENTILE: This is definitely a bad move for the people in the Mon Valley.
FRAZIER: Deborah Gentile is a Pittsburgh-area doctor who has studied impacts from air pollution at U.S. Steel plants in the Monongahela, or Mon, River Valley. She found almost a quarter of the kids living near U.S. Steel plants had asthma.
GENTILE: And that's double to triple what you should be seeing.
FRAZIER: The Biden-era rules would have required the Clairton plant to limit pollution linked to asthma. And if benzene emissions were found to exceed federal thresholds, it would have had to come up with a plan to cut them. U.S. Steel says the rules would have imposed exorbitant costs and impacted American jobs without bringing much environmental benefit.
GORDON JOHNSON: Is there a way to clean it up? Yes.
FRAZIER: Gordon Johnson is head of GLJ Research, which follows the steel industry. He says cleaning the industry up would probably require companies like U.S. Steel to switch away from the traditional use of coal to modern techniques that use electricity, natural gas or hydrogen, and that would be expensive. Johnson says steel companies try to keep plants going as long as they can.
JOHNSON: They're not just going to start nilly-willy shutting down plants. They'll patch it up and they'll continue pushing steel out of the plant.
FRAZIER: Local officials say they can't afford layoffs or losing the plant, which employs about a thousand people. Rich Lattanzi is Clairton's mayor.
RICH LATTANZI: You know, with the city of Clairton, it's about 30% of our tax base. Without that mill, I don't think the city can run.
FRAZIER: Lattanzi himself retired from U.S. Steel in 2021. He argues air quality has improved, and he supports the Trump administration's pause on the new rules.
LATTANZI: We at least got a window for four years right now, if not longer, you know, that we can make some things happen. So I think big business is going to prosper. I think, you know, our economy is going to get better.
FRAZIER: At their new house, the Meckels are skeptical. They both voted for Donald Trump, but they disagree with his administration's move to pause the new rules on air pollution.
C MECKEL: We can have both. You can breathe clean air, and U.S. Steel can make money.
FRAZIER: The Meckels have listed their old house in Glassport near the U.S. Steel plant, but it hasn't sold yet. For NPR News, I'm Reid Frazier in Pittsburgh. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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