The Indiana Department of Environmental Management has proposed a rule to reduce smog in Lake and Porter counties.
Smog forms from the combination of sunlight and pollution from things like cars and industrial plants. It can make it more difficult to breathe and aggravate lung and heart conditions.
What would the rule do and why is it needed?
Lake and Porter counties have too much smog — which means they don't meet national air quality standards. In order to get into compliance, IDEM has to find a way to reduce some of the main ingredients in smog — nitrogen oxides (NOx).
IDEM's proposed rule would require some factories in the area to add “reasonably available” technology to better control NOx. But it's hard to say how much it would help,.
The only two facilities that would have to add equipment are Cleveland-Cliffs Indiana Harbor and W.R. Grace.
W.R. Grace had already planned to add the pollution control technology IDEM suggested — it would just speed up the timeline by a year. Cleveland-Cliffs would have to add a low NOx burner to one of its boilers at its iron production plant — but IDEM said that plant has been idled for more than a decade and that the boiler is "not essential to its operations."
What is "reasonable" for pollution control technology at steel plants?
That depends on who you ask. Advocates for greener steel want steelmakers to make big changes — swapping their coal-based blast furnaces for cleaner tech, like direct reduced iron with green hydrogen.
READ MORE: Air pollution still plagues nearly half of Americans. That does a number on our health
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IDEM said this would be too expensive. The agency set a limit where technology to comply with the rule can’t cost more than $5,000 for every ton of NOx pollution reduced.
That’s on the lower end of the states IDEM analyzed for the rule. The agency noted it was "the most conservative threshold approved" by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Mike Zoeller is an attorney with the Conservation Law Center. He said these are billion-dollar companies and that the state also needs to consider the human costs.
“Because it is expensive to take your kid to the emergency room every time they have an asthma attack,” Zoeller said.
Wanda Torres lives across the street from U.S. Steel's Gary Works plant. She asked the state environmental rules board to start addressing pollution from steel mills now.
“You ask me, ‘Why don’t you move like other people move?’ Well this is my place, this is my home, this is my land. Why can’t you — or people — understand that you’re killing us?” she said.
Zoeller said IDEM could require steel mills to add more low-NOx burners — a cheaper alternative to direct reduced iron.
Because IDEM missed a deadline for the rule, the state will have to offset twice the amount of NOx pollution of any new industrial facility that moves in.
If IDEM doesn’t meet its next deadline for the rule in November, the EPA could withhold about $180 million in transportation funding from Lake and Porter counties.
Rebecca is our energy and environment reporter. Contact her at rthiele@iu.edu or on Signal at IPBenvironment.01. Follow her on Twitter at @beckythiele.