pa1778data.pdf
pa1778data.pdf
pa1778data.pdf
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U.S. STEEL DUQUESNE WORKS<br />
HAER No. PA-115<br />
(Page 42)<br />
health professions, and voluntary associations. The commission<br />
prepared an ordinance—passed by city council in July—that<br />
required the elimination of industrial smoke through the use of<br />
smokeless fuels or by the application of smokeless mechanical<br />
equipment by October of 1941. Although the compliance date was<br />
eventually waived because of the War, the issue was kept alive by<br />
the creation of a new organization, the United Smoke Council<br />
(U.S.C.), consisting of eighty organizations from Pittsburgh and<br />
Allegheny County. The U.S.C. gained an important ally when the<br />
Allegheny Conference on Community Development (A.C.C.D.) joined<br />
forces with it at the end of 194 5. Composed of leading<br />
businessmen from the region's major banks and corporations, the<br />
A.C.C.D. recognized the importance of environmental improvements<br />
in revitalizing the Pittsburgh Central Business District and<br />
ultimately the regional economy. As a result of their combined<br />
efforts, a new enforcement date for the elimination of industrial<br />
smoke was set for October 1, 1946. This was followed in 1949 by<br />
the enactment of a county-wide law embodying the principle<br />
features of the Pittsburgh ordinance. In order to comply with<br />
the county-wide statute, industry in Allegheny County spent over<br />
$200,000,000 by 1956 on the installation of modern combustion<br />
equipment, dust collectors, new boiler plants, precipitators, and<br />
other devices to eliminate smoke and other industrial<br />
pollution. 54<br />
Significant among the newly installed anti-pollution<br />
equipment was a ferromanganese gas cleaning plant at the Duquesne<br />
Works. The new law made it imperative that all future<br />
modernization projects at Duquesne provide for the installation<br />
of smokeless equipment. Consequently, new facilities, such as<br />
the basic oxygen steelmaking plant in 1963, were said to have the<br />
most modern gas cleaning and emission equipment in the nation at<br />
the time of its construction. 55<br />
Despite efforts to comply with emissions requirements, the<br />
increasing stringency of federal and local environmental laws as<br />
well as the poor performance of some of the smoke control<br />
54 Joel A. Tarr and William Lampres, "Changing Fuel Behavior:<br />
The P ittsburgh Smoke Contro1 Movement, 1940-1950 and Energy<br />
Transitions Today - A Case Study in Historical Analogy," Journal of<br />
Social History 14 (Summer 1981): 561-73; Park H. Martin, "The<br />
Renaissance: A Catalogue of Projects," Pittsburgh, Ed. by Roy<br />
Lufoove, (New York: 1976), 213.<br />
55 See section "Technological Developments, 1946-1984," for a<br />
discussion of the impact of the ferromanganese gas cleaning plant<br />
on the technological development of the Duquesne Works; "OSM Shop<br />
Is Important Addition In Duquesne Works Expansion," 720-21.