The U.S. Steel lawsuit is the most recent example of NELC’s three-decade-long effort to use public interest litigation to protect “fenceline” communities from the harmful impacts of industrial air pollution. Since 1996, NELC attorneys have taken on the steel industry, oil and petrochemical giants, and textile mills, from the Rust Belt to the Gulf Coast to New England. Our cases have resulted in drastic reductions of illegal emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, soot, smog-forming chemicals, and carcinogens. We have compelled companies to upgrade or phase out aging and poorly designed facilities, and have recouped tens of millions of dollars in ill-gotten profits by securing civil penalties—significant portions of which went to local communities for public health and air quality improvement projects.
Cutting Pollution From Steel Mills: Pennsylvania & Louisiana
Traditional methods of making steel are highly carbon-intensive, producing about 7% of carbon dioxide emissions globally. Making individual steel companies pay for the full costs of their environmental and health impacts is a key step in reforming that industry. NELC’s first Clean Air Act enforcement suit, in 1996, targeted Bayou Steel Corporation, a scrap metal recycling facility located in LaPlace, Louisiana, along a stretch of the Mississippi River long known as “Cancer Alley.” Years of bitterly fought litigation eventually forced the company to redesign its facility, end its violations, reduce other emissions below permitted limits, and pay $345,000 to fund, among other health projects, an asthma camp for at-risk children run by the L.S.U. Medical Center. Our cases against U.S. Steel and Arcelor Mittal took aim at western Pennsylvania’s two remaining coke plants—highly polluting facilities that bake millions of tons of coal each year to produce coke (an ingredient in steel making). Settlements in these cases mandated facility overhauls to cut emissions and generated funds for electrical vehicle projects and public health.
Holding Oil & Chemical Companies Accountable: The Texas Gulf Coast
In January, Amnesty International issued a 131-page report describing the Houston Ship Channel as a “sacrifice zone,” where residents’ life expectancy is 20 years shorter than that of people living a mere 15 miles away. This was not news to NELC. Starting in 2007, we have initiated enforcement actions against a half dozen of the world’s largest oil and petrochemical companies operating on the Ship Channel and elsewhere on the Texas Gulf Coast: Shell, Chevron Phillips, LyondellBasell, ExxonMobil, Petrobras, and Valero. Within three years of settling our law- suits, Shell and Chevron reduced their illegal pollution from so-called “upset” events—equipment failures, operator errors and other breakdowns—by 95%. ExxonMobil lost its case at trial and is currently appealing the largest penalty assessed in a Clean Air Act citizen suit (nearly $20 million). Environment Texas calculated that the penalties we secured against Shell, Chevron, Exxon, and Petrobras exceed- ed the total amount of penalties assessed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality against all Texas air polluters combined, over a five-year period.
