Nearly 50 people gathered Tuesday evening at the Gary Public Library to share a long-standing concern: The air they breathe has contributed to serious health problems.
The gathering, organized by the city’s Air Pollution Committee, took place just blocks away from Gary Works’ towering smokestacks, which have loomed over the city’s skyline for generations.
Much of the discussion focused on U.S. Steel’s Gary Works, the largest integrated steel mill in the country. The mill produces nearly 20% of the nation’s iron and 6% of its steel, and has been Gary’s economic anchor for more than a century.
But residents and recent health studies say it has also contributed to high rates of asthma, cancer, and other illnesses. A 2024 Industrious Labs report estimated the mill’s emissions are possibly linked to 114 premature deaths a year and more than 31,000 cases of asthma symptoms.
The meeting underscored the heightened stakes for the city. Residents pointed to weakened federal and state pollution safeguards, the dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice office, and loosened emissions standards on a federal and state level.
“We never saw this coming”
Gary native Taras Fossett drove more than three hours from Fort Wayne to join the meeting. He grew up in the Emerson neighborhood, in the shadow of the mill.
“I never saw this coming, the effects of what the steel mills could do to people,” Fossett said. “I have clear memories of what it looked like when pollution was dumped. It looked like fog, very thick fog. You couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t open your windows. I was diagnosed with severe chronic asthma as a kid. My dad and my mom didn’t know what to do.”
“I’m sure it has affected a lot of people,” he said. “I’m another face and another voice. But as more testimonies come through, I think more and more people will stand up and speak out about air pollution here in Gary. We can make a change,” he added.
“We are concerned about our health”
For Kwabena Rasuli, a member of the local environmental advocacy group Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, the losses are personal. He recalled his friend who died of respiratory illness just days after speaking out about his health issues from the mill at a previous air pollution committee meeting last April.
“Less than a week later, he was gone,” Rasuli said. “Respiratory issues took him out of here. And we have other instances like that. This is real. We are concerned about our health and our air quality.”
Rasuli and others said that technology exists to make steel without coal, but that it requires political will and corporate investment.
“It’s billions of dollars, yes, but it’s the right thing to do. It’s best for jobs, it’s best for the environment, and it’s best for our future,” he said.
Meanwhile, Gary Health Commissioner Dr. Janet Seabrook added that looming Medicaid cuts would only exacerbate the community’s health burdens, when coverage is stripped from residents with chronic illnesses from the pollutants.
“When they lose that coverage, we’re going to see more people in the emergency room,” she said.
Generations of illness
Even elected officials spoke as patients. Councilman Kenneth Whisenton, himself asthmatic, shared that his 5-month-old child now struggles with the same condition.
“There’s a misconception that air quality is a luxury, not a birthright,” Whisenton said, as residents nodded in agreement. “We went to the Adirondacks [Mountains in New York] a few weeks ago, and I didn’t need [an inhaler] at all. Back here in Gary, I use it every day,” he concluded, before excusing himself from the meeting to retrieve his inhaler.
Meanwhile, state Rep. Ragen Hatcher, emphasized the direct health impacts of steel pollution on Gary residents and pointed to cleaner alternatives for steel production.
“The steel mill here doesn’t just cause asthma, we also see lung cancer and other illnesses tied to pollution. But there are ways to make steel with far fewer emissions, like in other cities where mills are integrated responsibly into communities,” she said.
“We cannot take the word of U.S. Steel”
Later, some residents called for action and accountability by local and federal officials.
“We are at a crossroads in our city,” said GARD member Carolyn McCrady. “We cannot take the word of U.S. Steel that everything is fine. Right now, there is no one in charge of that story. The EPA has been gutted, and Indiana’s environmental agency isn’t a protection agency — it’s a management agency. It gives polluters permission to pollute.”
“We either stand up to injustice now,” McCrady added, “or we know what will happen if we don’t.”
Gary Common Council President Lori Latham said there are many misconceptions that assume the mill is breaking the law.
“We assume that when they’re polluting, that they’re doing something illegal, that it’s against the law. However, most of the emissions … that you see in the air are being permitted by our Indiana Department of Environmental Management,” she said. “The problem is not that they are breaking the law. It’s that our laws fundamentally are allowing them to. Our laws are too thin.”
Gary’s sustainability at stake
For some, the debate is about more than air quality. It’s about whether Gary can survive another generation of steelmaking without change. Direct reduction furnaces, which use natural gas or hydrogen instead of coal, are becoming standard in other steel cities, and, advocates say, are cleaner, more efficient, and crucial to ensuring the industry’s future.
“If Gary Works doesn’t replace its blast furnaces with direct reduction technology, the mill could be obsolete within two decades,” GARD President Dorreen Carey said. “And the city could be left with a 7-mile stretch of abandoned, polluted steel property along the lakefront.”
Added Latham: “The way we are making steel today is not a process that’s going to be used 30, 40, 50 years from now. For our mill to have long-term sustainability, and for our city to depend on it as a tax base, they must invest in newer, greener technology.”