In Pittsburgh We Know Better: Remarks on the War on Coal

Recently FirstEnergy Corp., a mid-Atlantic power company, announced it was closing two coal-fired power plants in my home state of Pennsylvania. FirstEnergy blamed the closings on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) tougher new air pollution regulations, known by the acronym MATS (Mercury and AirToxics Standards). These are neither the first nor will they be the last plant closings blamed on the new EPA rules. 

For the record MATS covers conventional air pollutants, such as particulates, mercury and other heavy metals, SO₂, and NO_x, not greenhouse gases. 

Blaming the closings on the EPA is at best a half-truth. While MATS would require upgrades to these power plants—upgrades FirstEnergy deemed a lousy investment—the demand for electric power remains weak, putting pressure on energy companies to close less efficient plants. What’s more, to the extent that decommissioned power plants need replaced, they will likely be replaced by gas-fired plants, which run cleaner, produce less CO₂, and enjoy a robust fuel supply from the Marcellus Shale formation. 

Bottom line: New EPA regulations + weak power demand + new natural gas reserves = the demise of older technology coal-fired power plants.

Despite the complex reality surrounding the FirstEnergy plant closings, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey made the following public statement:

I am very disappointed that—due to the Obama administration's policies—FirstEnergy is deactivating coal-fired power plants in Fayette and Washington counties today and leaving hundreds out of work. These unemployed Pennsylvanians are unfortunate casualties in the President's ‘war on coal,’ which I will continue to fight against in the Senate.

Coal is a domestically sourced, low-cost form of energy which helps sustain jobs for Pennsylvania and beyond. Over the decades, coal-fired plants also have gone to impressive lengths to reduce emissions. Nevertheless, the Obama administration continues to implement policies that will make energy more expensive for hard-working Pennsylvanians while destroying good, family-sustaining jobs.

When I read such stuff, typically I assume it's a pro forma jab in the ribs of a political opponent. In Toomey’s case it seems to come straight from his political heart. There is nothing in his political record that suggests he believes environmental regulations serve the public good. Remarkably, his official website doesn’t directly address the “environment” at all.

The Republican Party embraced the notion of a "war on coal" as a wedge issue during the 2012 election, potentially dividing the Democratic working class from Democratic environmentalists. But in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania the public debate over the burning of coal has informed local politics for more than a century. 

Corner of Liberty & Fifth Avenues in downtown Pittsburgh
at 10:55 AM in 1940

In this iconic photo of Pittsburgh from 1940, the sky is dark and the buildings and streetlamps illuminated. The clock at the corner of Liberty and Fifth Avenues stands at “10:55,” only it is 10:55 AM. Smoke from coal combustion—used to heat homes, move trains, and make steel—obscures the sun.

For Pittsburghers of my generation and social niche, primarily the baby-boomer offspring of the business and professional class, this photo represents the nadir, when the city for practical purposes became unlivable. It is the benchmark against which subsequent environmental progress is measured.

In truth, the year 1940 wasn’t exactly a eureka moment. Pittsburghers had complained about air quality from the early days of industrialization. In 1895 the city passed its first smoke control ordinance. The Ladies Health Protective Association (LHPA), an early women-led organization promoting public health issues, advocated strongly for the enforcement of this ordinance (we must assume it was widely flaunted). In any case a state court invalidated the ordinance in 1902. Another smoke ordinance was passed in 1906 and subsequently invalidated in 1911.

Aside: While the LHPA lost its initial battle to improve air quality, it successfully advocated for the end of garbage dumping in the Pittsburgh rivers. In the last years of the 19^th century women may not have had the vote, but they were becoming a potent political force.

Pittsburgh's Strip District 1906

You cannot easily ignore smoke pollution. In the 1940s Pittsburgh office workers reportedly brought an extra shirt to work knowing that the first shirt would be discolored before day’s end. It was intuitively obvious that such air wasn’t healthy. Nevertheless the politics were complicated. For working class Pittsburghers coal was a cheap fuel for home heating. Coal generated electricity. It powered locomotives. It ran the mills. Coal is a key ingredient (coke) in steel manufacture. The smoke-filled air of the 1940s was literally a sign of prosperity. Presumably the air was cleaner during the Depression years. In purely money-making terms everyone benefited from unrestricted coal burning; and everyone feared he would bear the biggest financial burden of cleaner air.   

And so, for many years, nothing happened.

In 1941 Pittsburgh passed another smoke control ordinance. Initially, like all its predecessors, it was largely ignored. Substantive change finally came after the end of WW II in 1945. There is a myth-like quality to the story: David L. Lawrence, the new Democratic mayor of the city, partnered with Richard K. Mellon, representing the Republican business and money interests, to clean-up and re-invent the city.  Undoubtedly the real story is more complex, but Pittsburghers, at least those familiar with the city’s history, revere both men for their ability to align competing interests and make positive change.

In 1947 the city mandated that all one- and two-family dwellings switch from coal to natural gas heating (natural gas came into the city via pipelines from the southwest U.S.). Train locomotives and river boats switched from coal to diesel fuel. In 1949 Allegheny County passed its own smoke control ordinance (most of the steel operations of the day were located outside the City of Pittsburgh). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the city and county incrementally stiffened the rules on  air emissions. In 1960 Allegheny County passed the strictest air particulates law in the nation. Gradually the air grew cleaner.

Donora, PA in 1948

For those who may have questioned the direction the city was taking in the late 1940s, a horrific event in the town of Donora swept aside (or should have) such concerns. Donora lies about 24 miles south of Pittsburgh in the Monongahela River valley. At the time it was home to a steel mill and zinc smelting operation. A weather inversion, typical for western Pennsylvania river valleys, trapped air in the town for four days. The intense acrid smog that resulted sickened over 7,000 of the town’s 14,000 residents and killed 20 (it also killed pets and livestock). It wasn’t until the fourth day of the emergency that US Steel ordered the zinc mill manager to shut down operations. 

Subsequent autopsies revealed lethal levels of fluorine. Hydrogen fluorine, a byproduct of coal combustion, is one of the pollutants regulated by the EPA’s new rules.

The Donora disaster is often cited as a rallying cry for the 1970 Clean Air Act and the creation the same year of the EPA. The 1970 Clean Air Act passed the Senate 73-0, passed the House 375-1, and was signed into law by Richard Nixon, a Republican president.

The cynical may say that it was environmental regulations that shuttered the area’s steel mills in the 1970s and 80s, which, in turn, eliminated the primary source of smog.  But this isn’t even a half-truth. By the 1970s, the domestic steel industry had grown weary, cautious, and complacent. The risk takers and the smart money that originally built the industry had moved on. The steel execs were content to milk the profits from their aging facilities and let foreign competitors build the next generation of steel plants. 

For a fascinating story of how an entrepreneur re-invented steel making in the mid-1980s, read Richard Preston’s 1991 American Steel.

So what to take-away from Senator Toomey’s response to the FirstEnergy plant closings?

Implicit in his public statement is the notion that we have done all that we should do regarding  air quality. Any further action, he believes, constitutes an unjustified “war” on a traditional domestic industry. As far as the science that supports the new EPA regulations…well, presumably it’s not good enough. In truth, for today's Republicans the science is never good enough. And we haven’t even touched on climate change science. It goes without saying Toomey doesn’t give it any weight.

Toomey suggests that coal-fired operators like FirstEnergy have been such good corporate citizens for their past “impressive lengths to reduce emissions” that we should not burden them henceforth with new regulations.  Left unsaid is that power companies do only what is required by law and nothing more. Generally there is no competitive advantage exceeding emission standards. In any case a company doesn't get a regulatory free pass just for obeying existing law.

Perhaps the biggest headscratcher is Toomey’s lack of faith in the ability of the free enterprise system to adapt to new business conditions. He clings to the status quo, seeing in change only the downside. He focuses only on the loss of jobs at FirstEnergy’s aged coal power plants, ignoring the promise of higher efficiency and cleaner emissions at prospective new gas-fired plants.

The Pittsburghers I grew up with believe that you must be an active steward of the earth. We reject the Tea Party notion that environmental regulation is a socialist conspiracy to deprive hardworking Americans of their personal freedom. That Senator Toomey deems the “environment” not worthy of comment on his website is at once unfathomable and disheartening. You want to shout: “Don’t you know what happened here?” “Don’t you know we almost destroyed our home?” 

In Pittsburgh we know better: coal may have built Pittsburgh, but it also almost destroyed it.