Across the street from the smoke plumes of Gary Works’ steel mill, community members gathered at 21st Century Charter School to fight for their right to clean air.
“Our air quality is a joke,” said Gary resident and gardener Libre Booker, who was moved to tears while speaking. “Our air quality is actually a joke. I went to a comedy club in Chicago, and they made a joke about the air quality here.”
Booker continued, emphasizing the community’s frustration and determination.
“This is ridiculous,” she said. “We are not asking for permission anymore. We demand clean air in Gary, period.”
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management is preparing to renew Gary Works air permit. In response, residents convened Thursday evening to urge IDEM to consider their concerns about the mill’s emissions and the associated risks to community health.
During Thursday’s two-hour public hearing, resident after resident stood and pleaded with IDEM not to renew U.S. Steel’s air permit, highlighting the crippling effects of its emissions on the community and the environment.
Residents criticized IDEM for overlooking environmental justice concerns in the renewed permit, noting that Gary Works disproportionately affects its predominantly Black community. They also highlighted inadequate monitoring and testing for pollution compliance and criticized the renaming of the sinter plant as the “recycling plant,” arguing that its misleading name and decreased testing could lead to outdated emissions data.
“There should be no permit given unless standards are met and are maintained throughout ownership,” Dwight Suggs, a Gary resident, said at Thursday’s hearing. “When it comes to pollution, if the steel mill won’t quit, they should get no permit.”
Donna Jack, 66, a former employee who worked in the coke plant to pay her way through college, described the agony she felt while working at U.S. Steel.
“Working in the coke plants was like getting up every morning and going to hell,” she said. “My brother worked in the blast furnace. Their by-products were red dust, and the coke plant was a black dust. It took from the beginning of the summer until the new year to get the coke out of my skin. It was all on my face; I couldn’t wear white, couldn’t wear any light color because of the coke plant.”
“And I remember one day someone at school asked, ‘How do I get to Gary?’” Jack continued. “And the person said, ‘You’ll know Gary because it’s got a haze over the city before you get there.’”
U.S. Steel’s Gary Works, the country’s largest integrated steel mill and Indiana’s biggest single source of carbon emissions and heavy metal pollution, employs 4,300 people.
A 2024 American Lung Association report gave Lake County, where Gary is located, a “C” grade for air quality and an “F” for ozone days. The report also identified asthma as the leading respiratory ailment in the county, affecting 42,000 adults and 9,000 children.
The Title V air permit designates the allowable pollution levels from the mill. However, a review of the draft from the Environmental Law and Policy Center said that the permit does not meet recent EPA emission standards for hazardous air pollutants, known as NESHAPS. If the permit is renewed without addressing the NESHAP provisions, Gary Works will continue to pollute as it has been.
“Air pollution affects people in a wide variety of ranges,” said Hilary Lewis, steel director of Industrious Labs, an independent climate advocacy organization that focuses on industrial products like iron coal and oil.
“The one that you hear most commonly about is asthma, but it can also increase heart attacks. Some of these different types of pollution can be associated with premature deaths. The other thing to think about is that it increases health care costs. So the types of health harms associated with these facilities send people to the emergency room or just increase their health care visits, and that adds up.”
Illustrating that point, Kimmie Gordon, founder of Brown Faces Green Spaces, a nonprofit that fosters diversity in environmental sectors, brought up her son, Kaleb Gordon, to speak during the hearing. Kaleb is a student-athlete who plays five sports including baseball, wrestling, and track.
“And what do you have to carry around with you at every sport?” Gordon asked him.
“An inhaler,” Kaleb responded.
“Youth here are born with potential,” Gordon said. “But they are also born with a disparity.”
Advocacy groups Environmental Integrity Project and the Environmental Law and Policy Center worked with local environmental groups like Gary Advocates for Responsible Development and Just Transition Northwest Indiana to break down and review the 700-page draft permit to identify issues and harmful air pollutants impacting nearby residents’ health.
“We want to make sure the pollution in the area is reduced,” said Ellis Walton, an associate attorney with the Environmental Law and Policy Center.
“Of course, people of color suffer the brunt of climate change, so reducing the pollution impact from the Gary works facility will definitely lift the burden on those most vulnerable to climate change.”