On April 30, U.S. Steel President David Burritt announced that a $1.5 billion project to majorly improve its Mon Valley Works operation with state-of-the-art steel casting, rolling technology, and a cogeneration plant is being canceled.
The project’s cancelation means that about 1,000 union construction jobs will be lost for the region. Likely thousands more U.S. jobs in supporting industries will be lost as a result.
Also, U.S. Steel is idling Batties 1, 2, and 3 at its Clairton Plant by 2023, which accounts for about 17 percent of coke production. The decision is intended to improve "environmental performance." That decision, U.S. Steel executives said, is unlikely to lead to layoffs for its 130 full-time employees at Batties 1, 2, and 3.
The cancelation of the Mon Valley Works investment came after U.S. Steel’s permitting process with the Allegheny County Health Department was delayed due to the Chinese coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...crisis.
Burritt mentioned in his announcement:
We commissioned the manufacturing of the equipment and began site preparations. However,
women are made to be loved, not understood...
with over $170 million invested and equipment being stored in Pittsburgh-area warehouses, we’re still only at the beginning stages of project execution. By contrast, during this same time period, a competing steel manufacturer in another state announced a new steel mill and will be ready to make steel this year.
A lot has changed in those two years. At the onset of the pandemic, U. S. Steel agreed with the need for the County Health Department to temporarily delay its permitting process for the Mon Valley Works, but this delay allowed for a consequential window of time during which we expanded our understanding of steelmaking’s future in a rapidly decarbonizing world. The world is changing rapidly and we’re on the ten-yard line with 90 yards ahead of us.
Republicans and others in Pennsylvania are now placing blame on Democrats and their allies in the environmental lobby for creating a hostile business environment that helped kill off the job-creating project.
State Sen. Kim Ward (R-PA) wrote in a series of posts that Allegheny County officials had kowtowed "to the extreme environmental groups without actually looking at the facts or consider the fall out."
"What happened today is the result of local government leaders letting radical environmental groups like PennFuture, GASP and Breathe PA, funded in part by elitist Pittsburgh Foundations, bully them into abandoning blue collar workers," Ward wrote.