Environmental advocates from Northwest Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Japan gathered online this week ahead of Nippon Steel’s annual shareholders’ meeting to urge the company to invest in newer, cleaner steelmaking technology in communities they fear are being left behind.
“The people of the Mon Valley [in western Pennsylvania] and Gary have given steel their labor, their loyalty, and too often their health,” said Matthew Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project, a nonprofit that works on air quality and climate pollution advocacy in Pittsburgh and southwest Pennsylvania.
“We’re asking Nippon to commit investments that would upgrade primary steelmaking in Pennsylvania and Indiana, like they’ve done in Arkansas, to replace old, outdated facilities with new ones that do not depend upon blast furnaces and coking, and to honor communities that have borne the burden from the past and deserve better treatment in the future,” Mehalik said.
Nippon Steel is the parent company of U.S. Steel, which operates Gary Works. U.S. Steel is headquartered in Pittsburgh.
The advocates’ concerns center on the future of aging steel facilities such as Gary Works and whether Nippon Steel’s promised investments will modernize those plants or simply extend the life of existing blast furnaces.
Nippon Steel completed its $15 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel in June 2025 and has pledged to invest $11 billion in the company by 2028, including a $350 million relining of Blast Furnace 14 at Gary Works. The project is expected to extend the furnace’s life by decades, but advocates argue the investment falls short of the larger modernization projects Nippon Steel is pursuing elsewhere.
Kwabena Rasuli, an environmental activist and board member of Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, or GARD, represented Gary during Monday’s event.
“We can tell you with great certainty that practically everyone in Gary is impacted by what happens at Gary Works,” he said.
Part of GARD’s work has been listening to the stories of community members impacted by U.S. Steel. Rasuli said generations of Gary people have made the steel that has built the United States and made Gary Works what it is today — but at a price.
“The blast furnaces produce a tremendous amount of pollution, so we get the cancers. We watch as our children gasp for air because they’re suffering from asthma. We agonize as our parents and friends die young,” Rasuli said.
A recent report from Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute estimated that air pollution associated with Northwest Indiana’s steelmaking industry contributes to roughly $100 million in annual healthcare costs, hundreds of respiratory-related emergency room visits, and tens of thousands of lost work and school days each year.
The concerns raised Monday echo those voiced earlier this month in Gary, where more than 100 residents gathered at the Gary Public Library for a town hall organized by GARD. Participants argued that decisions about the future of the steel industry are often made without meaningful community input and expressed concerns that Northwest Indiana is being left behind as companies invest in newer technologies elsewhere.
“Gary needs and deserves investment in clean steel,” said Lisa Vallee, organizing director of Just Transition Northwest Indiana and one of the organizers of the Gary steel town hall. “Nippon Steel is choosing to build that future somewhere else instead of investing in the community that helped build this country. They are leaving Gary behind.”
Gary Works is one of the seven remaining primary steel mills in the nation. Alongside plants in Burns Harbor and Indiana Harbor, the three Northwest Indiana mills account for 47% of the country’s primary steel production, according to the Environmental Resilience Institute report.
According to the report, Northwest Indiana’s steel industry employed more than 65,000 workers at its peak. Today, the industry supports about 9,000 jobs, and that number could be cut in half by 2034 if the region does not modernize.
“Northwest Indiana has been the backbone of American steelmaking for generations, but the technologies that built that legacy are now putting the region at a competitive disadvantage,” said Gabriel Filippelli, executive director of the Environmental Resilience Institute. “Our analysis shows that modernizing these mills offers a clear path to slow or even reverse decades of job losses, while ensuring the industry has a future in Indiana.”
The report estimates modernization could reduce key air pollutants by nearly 60% and cut climate-warming emissions by 45% to 76%, depending on the energy source used.
In Gary, advocates have pushed for a transition from a traditional blast furnace to a direct reduction iron furnace, which uses hot natural gas instead of coke to remove oxygen from iron ore. Supporters say the process is cleaner and more efficient.
According to Roger Smith, Asia lead for SteelWatch, an organization that monitors the steel industry, similar investments are being made at a new facility in Osceola, Arkansas.
Smith said the Big River Steel electric arc furnace facility is expected to become Nippon Steel’s first Responsible Steel-certified operation in North America.
U.S. Steel has previously pushed back on suggestions that Gary Works is being left behind.
In a statement provided to Capital B Gary earlier this month, a company spokesperson said U.S. Steel is focused on “modernizing and improving the existing facility rather than replacing it entirely.” The company said the investments are intended to improve efficiency, environmental performance, and product quality.
U.S. Steel also noted that Gary Works produces more than 3 million tons of specialized automotive steel annually, and argued those products cannot currently be produced at the same scale using direct reduction iron and electric arc furnace technology.
“It’s not too late,” Smith said. “Nippon is also now responsible for U.S. Steel’s long-standing problems in the community with pollution, broken promises and strained labor relations. The company has an opportunity to fix these relationships at the same time that it fixes the facilities themselves.”
Added Vallee: “The future of Northwest Indiana is deeply tied to the future of steel.”
