In late July, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin appeared at an auto dealership in Indianapolis, just three hours away from the smoke stacks of the nation’s largest integrated steel mill, to unveil “one of the largest deregulation efforts in U.S. history.”
It’s just one of the latest slashes to environmental safeguards affecting industrial communities near heavy industry like Gary, which is home to U.S. Steel’s Gary Works, the state’s biggest polluter. As Gary’s predominantly Black community faces continued higher health risks, and fewer protections, federal rollbacks to key air quality regulations will exacerbate problems.
Faced with disproportionate environmental tolls, Gary has taken several significant steps toward prioritizing sustainability over the past year, including ousting a polluting waste-to-jet fuel facility, rallying citywide cleanup campaigns, forming an environmental advisory council backed by the mayor, and hosting the city’s first sustainability conference. However, residents are set to face up steep opposition from a slew of federal rollbacks that could have adverse repercussions in the region and other steel communities across the nation.
“We are witnessing the wholesale dismantling of the EPA and environmental protections that will devastate air quality in Northwest Indiana.” said Lisa Vallee, organizing director of Just Transition Northwest Indiana. “This is environmental injustice: they are sacrificing our communities, gutting our social safety nets, and taking away our future. We will not stay silent.”
This summer, the EPA rolled back or delayed three critical environmental protections, the results of which directly threaten the health and safety of communities like Gary, a city already bearing the brunt of industrial pollution, environmental racism, and health disparities.
Here are the three actions, and what they mean for Gary residents:
Gutting the Endangerment Finding
In late July, the EPA announced plans to repeal the 2009 Endangerment Finding. This is the scientific and legal backbone that affirms greenhouse gases are a risk to public health, and the foundation of critical Clean Air Act protections and regulations. The move threatens decades of climate protections, including carbon limits on cars, trucks, and industrial polluters like steel plants.
Revoking this scientific finding would reduce the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, a move environmental advocates warn could undermine efforts to address climate change. For a city like Gary, whose namesake steel mill produced the most emissions of any steelmaker in Indiana — 182 tons of 24 different types of hazardous air pollutants in 2022 — the decision could exacerbate a century’s worth of air pollution already prevalent in the city, resulting in less oversight, and worse health consequences. According to a 2024 report by Industrious Labs, an environmental organization focused on industry, the Gary Works plant contributes to an estimated 57 to 114 premature deaths, 48 emergency room visits, more than 11,000 school and work loss days, and almost 32,000 asthma attacks each year.
Residents can share their opinion during the EPA’s 45-day public comment period at https://www.regulations.gov.
“Weakening these protections will not make our communities safer, our air cleaner, or our water more drinkable,” said Indiana state Rep. Sue Errington, D-Muncie. “It only benefits polluters while leaving taxpayers and future generations to bear the costs.”
Postponing steel mill emission standards
At the same time, the EPA quietly issued an interim final rule delaying enforcement of the hazardous air pollution standards for iron and steel plants, a set of health safeguards finalized in 2024 after years of advocacy and litigation.
Originally set to take effect this year, the updated rule would have required steel mills like U.S. Steel’s Gary Works to curb emissions of cancer-causing pollutants. But under the new delay, enforcement won’t begin until April 2027.
According to EPA estimates, that three-year gap means an additional 120 tons of hazardous pollution — including benzene, arsenic, and chromium — will be emitted in steel communities across Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
“This rule delay lets the coal-based steel industry off the hook for over a hundred tons of cancer-causing emissions, just to save polluters a sliver of profit,” said Hilary Lewis, steel director at Industrious Labs. “It’s unacceptable.”
In Gary, those pollutants compound existing health burdens: higher rates of asthma, cardiovascular disease, and early mortality. The 2024 Industrious Lab report found that communities near coke plants in the U.S. have cancer rates 26% higher than the national average. Meanwhile, Gary was in the top 10% of U.S. communities reporting asthma due to exposure.
In response, Gary environmental advocacy organization Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, alongside community groups in Pennsylvania and Ohio, joined an Earthjustice petition to challenge the EPA’s final interim rule.
“The EPA Interim Final Rule fails to protect Gary residents and the surrounding northwest Indiana communities from decades-long and ongoing exposure to uncontrolled health-harming hazardous air pollutants from U.S. Steel Gary Works and area steel mills,” said Dorreen Carey, GARD’s president.
Rewarding polluters through tax giveaways
Congress recently passed President Donald Trump’s sweeping “Big, Beautiful Bill” which incorporates a slew of tax cuts, including a 2.5% permanent tax credit for companies that use metallurgical coal, the primary fuel used in traditional steelmaking. Now signed into law, the bill provides hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to coal-based steel producers, reinforcing incentives for coal-based steelmaking.
For Gary residents, the federal rollbacks could delay the adoption of cleaner technologies and more public money funneled into legacy systems. Local advocates have long pushed for cleaner and modern steelmaking processes, like Direct Reduction, a method that can turn iron ore into high-grade crude steel without the use of metallurgical coal, which could reduce emissions.
This also has implications for local companies that use coal, like Nippon Steel. Earlier this year, U.S. Steel announced a partnership with Nippon Steel, which has indicated its plans to maintain and expand operations at Gary Works using existing blast furnace technology — a process that relies on coke, a coal-derived fuel. The move comes as federal regulatory standards for emissions are being reconsidered.
Bonus: State regulation continues to weaken
At the state level, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management recently issued an air permit renewal for Gary Works — much to the chagrin of environmental advocates. According to the Environmental Law and Policy Center, which filed a petition opposing the permit, the permit lacks key safeguards required under the Clean Air Act, including clear rules for monitoring, emissions testing, and recordkeeping.
“U.S. EPA should object to this permit because it’s inconsistent with the Clean Air Act, and the region’s Hoosiers should not feel like they are living in a sacrifice zone,” said Kerri Gefeke, associate attorney at the Environmental Law & Policy Center. “IDEM needs to do better and ensure that Gary Works is operating in a way that is not only economically lucrative but also protective of human health.”
Without these protections, community leaders say, there’s little federal or local protection to stop companies from exceeding pollution limits without consequences.
“This dangerous situation opens the door to an ‘anything goes’ model for industry in a city already pushed to the brink,” said Susan Thomas, policy director of Just Transition Northwest Indiana. “Access to clean air, safe water, and healthy soil is a fundamental human right — one that Gary, and every community, deserves without compromise.”