Bethlehem Steel Agrees to Fine on Pollution

Ending more than four years of litigation, Bethlehem Steel Corp. has agreed to pay $6.7 million to the federal government and Pennsylvania for violating pollution standards at two steel plants.

Government officials said Monday that Bethlehem also agreed to bring the two Pennsylvania steel plants in Bethlehem and Johnstown into compliance with the 1990 Clean Air Act at an estimated cost of $32 million.

Bethlehem Steel already has invested $1.6 million at the Johnstown plant to reduce emissions. Bethlehem will install new doors on the plant’s coke ovens to reduce the toxic emissions, a spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency said.

The EPA’s regional administrator, Edwin Erickson, said the agreements “will significantly improve the air quality in these two communities, in particular reducing the threat of cancer from coke oven emissions in Bethlehem.”

The civil penalties for the violations at the Johnstown plant amounted to $1.7 million for furnace emissions. The remainder was for the Bethlehem plant violations.

The agreement, and an earlier deal to curb air pollution at the company’s plant in Burns Harbor, Ind., end more than four years of litigation between the government and the steel firm.