EPA Drops Planned Delay in Compliance With Fenceline Monitoring at Coke Plants

Public health advocates pushed back when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it planned to delay for two years a requirement that steel companies monitor air quality at the perimeters of their 11 coke plants in Western Pennsylvania and across the country. Two groups sued.

Now, the EPA has reversed course.

The deadline to begin so-called fenceline monitoring for emissions of benzene, chromium and other toxic contaminants, set by the Biden administration, had been in July. On July 8, the Trump EPA extended the deadline until July 2027 in an interim final rule , saying there wasn’t enough time to seek, compile and respond to public comments, potentially forcing some companies into violation.

On Friday the EPA said in a notice that it was withdrawing the delay because the policy wouldn’t create compliance problems for industry after all.

“EPA does not believe that the currently available information supports a conclusion that regulated parties would face significant immediate compliance challenges,” the agency wrote after the nonprofits Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice sued over the matter.

The environmentalists’ lawsuit challenged the rule on the grounds that it deprived people in nearby communities of protection against toxic air pollution. Rather than defend the interim final rule in court, the environmental groups said in a statement, the EPA affirmed its prior finding that coke ovens are fully capable of complying with the rule, “thereby acknowledging that the delay of compliance dates was never needed.”

“We’re glad that EPA recognizes the harm coke oven plants cause to communities and that it is more than reasonable for these facilities to meet emissions standards now,” Adrienne Lee, a senior Earthjustice attorney, said in a statement. “The health and wellbeing of impacted communities should not come at the cost of giving corporate polluters a pass.”

An August report from the Environmental Integrity Project examined preliminary testing the Biden administration required steel and coke plants to conduct. EIP found that emissions of benzene, a carcinogen, from U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works near Pittsburgh were up to eight times higher than a California standard, which the group used as a national benchmark because many states don’t have ambient air-quality standards. At another U.S. Steel plant in Gary, Ind., a six-month average of emissions of chromium were twice as high as the California standard, EIP said.

Two people died and 10 were injured in an explosion at the Clairton plant in August. The facility has been fined more than $10 million by the EPA for environmental violations in the last three years, more than any other plant on a list of 20 surveyed by EIP. 

U.S. Steel criticized the EPA’s withdrawal of the compliance deadline and said it would consider its next steps.

“U. S. Steel is committed to working with the EPA and supports regulations that are well-grounded in law, and are based on sound science, available and proven technology, and that consider costs and other non-air quality impacts. Unfortunately, the 2024 coke rules do not meet these criteria, and we are evaluating next steps,” the company said in a statement.