pa1778data.pdf

U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS
HAER No. PA-115
(Page 42)
health professions, and voluntary associations. The commission
prepared an ordinance—passed by city council in July—that
required the elimination of industrial smoke through the use of
smokeless fuels or by the application of smokeless mechanical
equipment by October of 1941. Although the compliance date was
eventually waived because of the War, the issue was kept alive by
the creation of a new organization, the United Smoke Council
(U.S.C.), consisting of eighty organizations from Pittsburgh and
Allegheny County. The U.S.C. gained an important ally when the
Allegheny Conference on Community Development (A.C.C.D.) joined
forces with it at the end of 194 5. Composed of leading
businessmen from the region's major banks and corporations, the
A.C.C.D. recognized the importance of environmental improvements
in revitalizing the Pittsburgh Central Business District and
ultimately the regional economy. As a result of their combined
efforts, a new enforcement date for the elimination of industrial
smoke was set for October 1, 1946. This was followed in 1949 by
the enactment of a county-wide law embodying the principle
features of the Pittsburgh ordinance. In order to comply with
the county-wide statute, industry in Allegheny County spent over
$200,000,000 by 1956 on the installation of modern combustion
equipment, dust collectors, new boiler plants, precipitators, and
other devices to eliminate smoke and other industrial
pollution. 54
Significant among the newly installed anti-pollution
equipment was a ferromanganese gas cleaning plant at the Duquesne
Works. The new law made it imperative that all future
modernization projects at Duquesne provide for the installation
of smokeless equipment. Consequently, new facilities, such as
the basic oxygen steelmaking plant in 1963, were said to have the
most modern gas cleaning and emission equipment in the nation at
the time of its construction. 55
Despite efforts to comply with emissions requirements, the
increasing stringency of federal and local environmental laws as
well as the poor performance of some of the smoke control
54 Joel A. Tarr and William Lampres, "Changing Fuel Behavior:
The P ittsburgh Smoke Contro1 Movement, 1940-1950 and Energy
Transitions Today - A Case Study in Historical Analogy," Journal of
Social History 14 (Summer 1981): 561-73; Park H. Martin, "The
Renaissance: A Catalogue of Projects," Pittsburgh, Ed. by Roy
Lufoove, (New York: 1976), 213.
55 See section "Technological Developments, 1946-1984," for a
discussion of the impact of the ferromanganese gas cleaning plant
on the technological development of the Duquesne Works; "OSM Shop
Is Important Addition In Duquesne Works Expansion," 720-21.