U.S. Steel to hold info sessions about Clairton, Braddock plant upgrades

U.S. Steel will host two information sessions this week to preview how a $1.2 billion investment in its Mon Valley Works facilities will move forward, the company announced Monday.

Two identical sessions will be held Tuesday, Jan. 28 and Wednesday, Jan. 29 at 6 p.m. at the U.S. Steel training facility in Duquesne.

U.S. Steel engineers and other operations employees will discuss investments in the endless casting and rolling facility at the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock and the new cogeneration facility at the Clairton Coke Works facility in Clairton.

The company announced the investment in May and claimed that the upgrades would help both sites to be more environmentally friendly and efficient.

At that time, U.S. Steel projected that the new facilities would be online by 2022.

Buses will be available to shuttle community members from Clairton and Braddock to the event. The Clairton shuttle will depart from the Clairton Municipal Building at 5:15 p.m. The Braddock shuttle will depart from the Braddock municipal building at 5:30 p.m. Both shuttles will return to their respective starting points at 7:40 p.m., following the meeting.

The Allegheny County Health Department is not involved with the information sessions this week, Deputy Director of Environmental Health Jim Kelly said in an e-mail statement.

“As plans for the proposed investment in the Mon Valley move forward, we will be involved in all of the aspects associated with planning, permitting and ultimately enforcement as related to our regulatory authority in Allegheny County,” Kelly said.

U.S. Steel is facing two federal lawsuits tied to fires at the Clairton Coke Works in December 2018 and June 2019.

A suit brought by the Allegheny County Health Department, along with PennEnvironment and the Clean Air Council, will address permit violations related to coke oven gas pollution following the fires.

The other suit was filed by the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council. It alleges that U.S. Steel violated the federal Superfund law, also known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), by failing to report the release of hundreds of thousands of pounds of hydrogen sulfide, benzene and other hazardous pollutants into the air following the December fire.