The Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD) is seeking public comment on the revised Title V operating permit for U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson facility in Braddock, and if you’re thinking to yourself, “Didn’t we JUST go through this process?” you are correct.
Here’s what’s going on:
Many of you joined GASP in June 2022 to implore ACHD to issue the facility a Title V operating permit that was as protective of public health as possible. You can read more about all that here. On Aug. 1, 2023, ACHD issued that permit, which you can read here.
But it wasn’t a done deal yet. That’s because both U.S. Steel AND the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) successfully made appeals that required substantive enough changes to necessitate a second public comment period.
So, what are those changes?
For the most part, the permit amendments required by the U.S. Steel appeal dealt with language revisions and corrections to various SO2 limits for Blast Furnaces 1 and 3.
The changes necessitated by the EPA appeals are a bit more substantive – and ones GASP supports. They:
increased testing frequency of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and carbon monoxide (CO) testing from once every four years to once every two years
required the facility to calculate the daily emissions of particulate matter (PM), sulfur dioxides (SOX), nitrogen oxides (NOX), CO, and VOCs as part of its compliance demonstration
require the facility to calculate the monthly emissions of PM, SOX, NOX, CO, and VOCs
Require that U.S. Steel to monitor the oxygen content of Edgar Thomson’s Riley Boilers’ exhaust. Proper oxygen levels typically improve combustion efficiency, which in turn reduce CO and VOC emissions removed the short-term limits on PM emissions from Edgar Thomson’s cooling tower after ACHD re-evaluated the limits and determined that they were back-calculated from annual limits and not representative of actual limits. Because of the nature of the cooling towers, they are not enforceable limits. ACHD added a requirement to calculate monthly emissions.
Comments on these amendments will be accepted at a public hearing at 6 p.m. Sept. 23 at:
Greater Valley Community Services
300 Holland Avenue
Braddock, PA 15104
Those who wish to address ACHD at the hearing need to sign up to speak by 6 p.m. Sept. 22. You can do that here.
Written comments will be accepted through 11:59 p.m. Sept. 23. They can be sent by email to: aqpermits@alleghenycounty.us.