close

Local air pollution measures needed

4 min read

Local editorials from 50 years ago are being reprinted every Monday and Tuesday in this column. This editorial appeared in the Valley Independent on July 12, 1967.

The adoption of local air pollution control measures in the mid-Mon Valley has become a matter of urgent necessity. We hope the governing bodies of the larger municipalities agree and will decide to stop avoiding the issue and begin to deal with it responsibly and effectively.

To be sure, air pollution has been a problem in the Valley as long as its present residents can remember, certainly ever since the steel mills were installed beginning just before 1900.

Two or three generations of residents accepted the smoke and dirt of the mills as unavoidable if not actually normal.

But times have changed, to coin a phrase. Today smoke and dirt and fumes are not only avoidable or at least controllable, but almost no self respecting community accepts them as normal. It is not too much to say, in fact, that communities today which do not do something effective to control pollution of the atmosphere their people must live in are, in a real sense, compromising their future development.

That is certainly true of the Mon Valley, in our opinion. The failure thus far of our local governments to deal effectively with air pollution seriously jeopardizes the Valley’s prospects for industrial development Similarly, it puts obstacles in the way of residential expansion, the establishment of new recreational facilities and the attractiveness of the environment for all other purposes.

We say the matter is becoming more urgent because we see little reduction in the pollution coming from the Monessen plant of Pittsburgh Steel Co., notably-the basic oxygen furnaces, the blast furnaces, the coke oven and the sintering plant. We know the management of the company is aware of the problems and sensitive to the growing public concern.

But this awareness is not producing marked relief as anyone in the vicinity of the plant can observe for himself almost any hour of the day or night.

It does not enhance the public’s acceptance of these unacceptable conditions to realize Pittsburgh Steel has gradually removed from Monessen a number of departments and operations which were relatively free of smoke and dirt, leaving the Valley with significantly less employment but approximately the same atmospheric contamination.

The Monessen City Council owes it to its constituents in Monessen proper and to Monessen’s neighbors in the Valley to begin to bring this condition under formal regulation by the adoption and enforcement of a carefully drawn smoke abatement ordinance.

The experience of scores of industrial communities shows that, not until such a substantive step is taken, will any industry be likely to make a maximum effort to minimize air pollution.

The problem is different now in Donora since there is no longer a steel mill in that municipality. But within a short time construction of a plant to manufacture chemical fertilizers is scheduled to be started by Hercules, Inc.

This company has given verbal assurances that its operations will not contribute significantly to atmospheric pollution. But it seems to us that the borough council of Donora owes it to Donora’s residents and to their neighbors throughout the Valley to make certain, by regulatory legislation, that the Hercules assurances are genuine. And we cannot imagine that any company, knowing of Donora’s tragic experience with contaminated air, would be unsympathetic with its desire never again to harbor an industrial operation which would produce lethal air pollution.

Now is the time to make sure of that.

We are aware, of course, of increased concern at both the federal and state levels of the air pollution problem. Pennsylvania is in the process of developing a regional pact with neighboring states under which common standards would be established to regulate industrial and other pollution. The state’s own control laws probably are going to be improved and tightened by the present session of the legislature acting on recommendations of Gov. Raymond P. Shafer. A two-year state study of air pollution in this immediate area is to be completed this fall. We see no reason, however, why local governing bodies should hold back from dealing with local conditions, both those which now exist and are well recognized and those which can be anticipated.

No matter what is done — or is not done — in Harrisburg or Washington, D. C., about air pollution, something should be done in the mid-Mon Valley. For local government not to concern itself with this matter promptly is to ignore the past and compromise the future.

CUSTOMER LOGIN

If you have an account and are registered for online access, sign in with your email address and password below.

NEW CUSTOMERS/UNREGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Never been a subscriber and want to subscribe, click the Subscribe button below.

Starting at $4.79/week.

Subscribe Today