New Boston Coke fined $2.6 million in Ohio EPA suit for air pollution

Sunday, January 12, 2003

Michael Hawthorne
The Columbus Dispatch

Cancer-causing air pollution from a southern Ohio coal processor during the 1990s was worse than conditions fond in some Third World countries, say state regulators who won a $2.6 million court judgment against the company.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency estimates that one in every 500 people exposed to airborne benzene and other chemicals from New Boston Coke has a higher-than-normal risk of developing cancer. By contrast, the cancer risk in most urban areas is between one case per 100,000 and one per 1 million.

``That was a record,'' said Paul Koval, an EPA toxicologist. ``We were hard-pressed to find any other place in the country with levels that high.''

The company operated the processor in New Boston, an Ohio River village of 2,340 people about 85 miles south of Columbus.

In a scathing ruling handed down last month, Judge Howard H. Harcha of Scioto County Common Pleas Court said New Boston Coke never complied with permits that required the company to limit air pollution from its battery of ovens, which baked coal into coke used to fuel blast furnaces in Midwestern steel mills.

The biggest portion of the fines imposed by Harcha - $1.9 million - was a record judgment for the EPA's Division of Air Pollution Control. Harcha also fined the company for violating hazardous-waste and clean-water laws.

``This court finds the air-pollution claims are the most egregious violations in that they more directly impacted public health and safety,'' Harcha wrote.

State lawyers are having trouble collecting the money, though.

The owners of New Boston Coke locked out their workers last spring, shut down the plant and filed for federal bankruptcy protection, ending 86 years of production. The EPA is among several creditors trying to get their money through a federal bankruptcy court in Michigan, where the company is based.

When the plant's 70 coke ovens were baking up to 600,000 tons of coal a year, EPA tests determined the air quality in surrounding neighborhoods was worse than in the largest industrial areas of the United States.

Levels of airborne benzene in New Boston were 42 times higher than levels found in Cleveland and four times higher than in Cincinnati, the EPA said.

Benzene is among several chemical byproducts of coke production that typically are recovered and sold to other markets. Long-term exposure to benzene can cause leukemia and anemia.

Attorneys for New Boston Coke did not return telephone calls. The company tried unsuccessfully in court to raise doubts about the EPA's findings and argued the air pollution did not pose a threat to public health.

Court records show the plant spewed high levels of pollution into the air for years, despite routine inspections by the EPA and the Portsmouth Local Air Agency.

The EPA later determined that New Boston Coke had failed to accurately report air emissions throughout the 1990s. No reports were filed for one smokestack that released most of the air pollution, agency records show.

In 1996, New Boston Coke reported that it released 60 tons of chemicals into the air. Two years later, the company filed a revised report that showed the plant actually released 5,357 tons into the air.

Under pressure from teh EPA, the company installed equipment in 1999 to burn off most of the troublesome chemicals. But the state had to go to court to force New Boston Coke to fix the problem.

The company shut down the plant last April after it locked out 200 workers during negotiations on a new labor agreement. It declared bankruptcy three months later.

Dave Payton, president of United Steelworkers of America Local 2116, said union members always knew that working at the coke ovens was a dirty, dangerous job.

``Some guys got cancer, but I don't know if that was anything unusual,'' Payton siad. ``We were more concerned about keeping our jobs.''

Likewise, nobody in New Boston knew how bad pollution was or the risks it posed to public health, Mayor Jim Warren said.

``We thought everything was under control,'' Warren said. ``The again, we live in a river valley lined with steel mills and chemical plants. We're getting it from all sides every day.''