Polluters Paradise is the Problem: A Letter to the Editor
On December 18, 2023, Japan’s largest steel maker, Nippon Steel, announced that it would acquire US Steel and that together. The deal has become a political hot potato in the run-up to the election. In September 2024, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., the group conducting the national security review of the sale, granted Nippon a 90-day extension, postponing a final decision until after the election.
In response to the Chicago Tribune’s recent editorial, JTNWI’s legislative and policy director, Susan Thomas, points out a few important points about the proposed buyout and why everyone should be taking notice. Read Susan’s abbreviated op-ed here and the full version below.
The first omitted point is that Nippon Steel has an abysmal environmental reputation in Japan and globally for blocking climate policy action, perpetuating coal use, and even coming under fire from shareholders in Tokyo this past June for its poor decarbonization strategy.
There is no reason to believe, in spite of monetary promises to improve the city of Gary, Indiana [US Steel’s Gary Works mill], Nippon will do anything other than repeat standard greenwashing efforts already utilized by existing industries in Northwest Indiana to "cover" their tracks. Specifically, one of Nippon's promises to invest $300 million in extending the life of a coal-burning blast furnace by 20 years is a dangerous investment that damns global climate goals and local health, where industry pollution has disproportionate impacts, as documented by Industrious Labs‘ Equity Mapper.
2. The second key point neglected in the Tribune's editorial is an open secret: The ultimate enticement luring these industries to the region is complicity by elected officials (with few exclusions) and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), an agency appointed by Governor Holcomb operating from a captured state house.
This past year, IDEM has issued drafts of industry permits that are incomplete, riddled with errors, and offer little to no oversight, enforcement, or penalty, ignoring extensive public comment efforts. The fox guards the henhouse here, with industry largely self-reporting. After ArcelorMittal spilled toxic cyanide into a local river in 2020, thousands of fish washed up dead, and public beaches and a drinking water facility were closed. With no emergency communication or contact from IDEM, it was the town council members who were left scrambling and panicking on the lakefront, calling people in from the water. When US Steel perpetrated a double spill in 2021 with zero public communication, IDEM was not on the scene until hours after the fact; it was the ranger for the Indiana Dunes National Park who closed down the waterways to protect the public. Those are only a few examples of a much wider and evidenced problem.
Additionally, multiple recent Supreme Court decisions have taken a sledgehammer to environmental laws with the overturning of the Chevron doctrine, as well as an unraveling of the Sackett case jeopardizing 50 years of water safeguarding efforts, and effectively blocking EPA enforcement of the "Good Neighbor" rule on air pollution. The fallout from these decisions could be catastrophic here and globally.
Those who live and work in the environmental justice communities of this region are desperately trying to pull out of sacrifice zone status, where largely low-income, Black and Brown residents have been continually dumped on for close to a century by polluting industries with little regard to rules, regulations or environmental law; where the cancer rate is ten times the national average. Workers in coal and steel built this country and should be honored. However, the overused and abused talking point of jobs at the expense of all else hasn't been valid in years as economic solutions to environmental issues exist, can create family-sustaining union jobs, and yet remain unincorporated by profit-driven industry laughing all the way to the bank as our children clutch their asthma inhalers on the soccer field enduring decades of cumulative impacts.
The people who live here deserve to thrive, and it's time to reclaim a quality of place where industry not only understands but promotes the interrelationship of community health, worker safety, union jobs where contractual agreements are upheld, and the environment. Historical significance as a sacrifice zone sets the region up as an easy mark prior to any buyout offers, making Northwest Indiana a target for profit-hungry polluters near and far and should not be perpetuated. While too much credit was given to Pennsylvania politics in the Tribune’s editorial, the solution to uplifting communities is directly related to mitigating the climate crisis.
