The Biggest Polluter in Cleveland

I am moving to Cleveland, Ohio in the next few months so I am particularly interested in environmental issues in that area. In googling information regarding environmental justice issues in that area, the name Mittal Steel - the biggest polluter in the Cleveland area - kept coming up again and again in the search results. Arcelor Mittal is an international company that produces nearly 10 percent of the world’s steel.

In my search I discovered that a number of environmental activist groups have focused efforts on the Mittal Steel company. Additionally, I found an article regarding the environmental justice issues surrounding the plant in a news release http://www.ohioej.org/newsreleases/cleveland_ej_forum.htm published by the Ohioans for Health, Environment and Justice group (OHEJ). The OHEJ and other environmental justice interests groups charge Mittal Steel with discrimination since a large minority and poor population lives around the plant. In the article one group member says that the working-class neighborhoods surrounding Mittal Still fit the classic definition of an “environmental justice community” with a 59% minority population (primarily African American and Hispanic) and with 26.9% of the residents below the poverty level.

In looking at the history of the ArcelorMittal company, I found that the company came to be from the merging of multiple steel mills. One of their largest facilities in the US is in Cleveland, OH, located on the Cuyahoga River for access to shipping via the Port of Cleveland and the Great Lakes in addition to highway and railroad systems. The Cleveland location is the result of a merger of Corrigan McKinney Steel and Otis Steel which were built in 1913 on the East Side and in 1914 on the West Side, respectively. Both companies were originally built at this location due to the convenience of shipping and the iron ore and coal reserves. The towns grew around them due to employment opportunities.

In the article “Environmental Justice: Normative Concerns, Empirical Evidence, and Government Action,” Evan J. Rinquist considers five potential causes of environmental inequities: scientific rationality, market rationality, neighborhood transition, political power, explicit discrimination. According to the history of the Cleveland plant, I think the previous companies selected the location based on scientific rationality; that is, the site selection was driven by technical criteria such as its geological characteristics of easy transport and raw material access. The original population settled at the plant’s foot due to the proximity of the steel working jobs. Neighborhood transition ensued and the high percentages of poor and minority populations came to live there.

Although I do not think that the location of Mittal Steel was selected with explicit discrimination, I do think that they are out of line with the way they conduct their business. The Ohio Citizen Action Program Director, Liz Ilg, says the company does not report its emissions correctly because they do no collect real data and instead use estimates based on the emissions of other steel plants with better pollution equipment. Even with underreported values, Mittal is still the biggest polluter in Cleveland according to the U.S. EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory. Meanwhile, the current residents suffer from the amount of pollution that the plant emits leading to health problems and, according to the news release, doctors have been telling nearby residents to move away from the plant to protect their health.