Stealing Back the Air, Water… and Steel
By Emma Christoff It was a warm muggy Tuesday morning as I hobbled to my car. My teenager was eager to get to school, and I wondered what the air was going to smell like today. Not 5 miles Southwest from my daughter’s school, sitting on the edge of the Monongahela river is Clairton Coke Works, one of the worst air and water polluters in the country. Decades of air and water pollution earned it the distinction of the, “biggest polluter in Pennsylvania,” and even the closing of Battery No. 15 does not make the air any easier to breathe. After a 2.2 million dollar fine in December of 2023, the plant still pushes out putrid hydrogen sulfide gas, along with the carcinogens cadmium and arsenic. The “Mon” doesn’t fare much better. Over 2 million pounds of pollution have been dumped into the brown murky river from the plant. As a lifelong Pittsburgher, it does not surprise me that asthma is common in Clairton. One in 5 children develop the disease in the region. Two of my daughters and I dev
