Please attend the public hearing regarding the proposed issuance of the draft Title V Operating Permit for ATI/Allegheny Ludlum and let the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD) your thoughts on this permit. The hearing will be on Dec. 19 at 6 p.m., in the Harrison Township Building, One Municipal Drive, Natrona Heights, 15065. Oral testimony must be scheduled by calling Karen Sagel at (412) 578-8115 no later than 4 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 15, 2017.
If you can’t attend the hearing in person, written comments may be submitted to the ACHD at aqpermits@alleghenycounty.us by the end of the day on Dec. 19, 2017.
The draft permit can be viewed here, under the right sidebar labeled “Permits in Public Comment.” GASP and other groups recently spoke out about the danger posed by increases in permitted pollution in a draft permit for ATI’s steel-making facility in Harrison.
Also, please sign our petition below, which we will deliver to the Health Department.
Our petition:
Dear Allegheny County Health Department Air Quality Program:
Residents of Brackenridge and across Allegheny County have a right to clean air. The latest draft permit for ATI’s Brackenridge steel plant fails to guarantee that right. The new draft permit allows the ATI plant to increase its pollution limits—some of which it has failed to meet for over a decade and which cannot lawfully be raised to the proposed levels.
The new draft allows the facility to emit three times more smog-forming pollution than the plant typically reports. Allegheny County already has an “F” grade from the American Lung Association on air quality for soot and smog pollution, which endanger asthmatics, children, the elderly, and those who work and play outdoors. We need to improve our air quality—not give polluters free rein to make it worse.
This permit would make it impossible to tell how much the plant is actually polluting, by not adequately requiring ATI to monitor or report emissions.
We strongly urge the ACHD to revise ATI’s operating permit to be more protective of public health and to comply with the law.