Midland plant listed as contributor to dirty Ohio River

Posted on by Listify Me

The federal government has designated the Ohio River as the most polluted waterway, by far, in the nation, and a Midland company has been noted as a significant contributor in Pennsylvania.

According to a report released this week based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory for 2010, the most recent data available, more than 32.1 million pounds of toxic materials were released into the Ohio River.

The next most polluted waterway was the Mississippi River, which saw 12.7 million pounds of toxic materials discharged into it, according to a release from the PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center, a statewide citizen-based environmental advocacy organization.

More than 10 million pounds of toxic chemicals were released into Pennsylvania waterways alone in 2010, making the state the seventh worst in the country, the report said.

Overall, more than 226 million pounds of toxic chemicals were released into 1,400 waterways in the nation in 2010, the report said.

The shores of the Ohio River, which travels through Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, are home to hundreds of industrial plants, many of which release chemicals into the water that the EPA has said can cause cancer and developmental and reproductive disorders.

The EPA listed the U.S. Steel Clairton Works as the biggest polluter in Pennsylvania, releasing 2.4 million pounds of toxics into the Monongahela River and Peters Creek.

But the biggest polluter in Beaver County was the Allegheny Technologies Inc. steel plant in Midland, which discharged 1.11 million pounds of toxics into the river, according to the EPA.

The ATI figures showed a significant increase from just a few years ago when the EPA listed 785,761 pounds of chemicals being released from the Midland facility in 2005. No explanation was given for the increase.

A call to ATI officials for comment was not returned Friday.

PennEnvironment is urging better pollution prevention by industries and stronger enforcement of pollution guidelines by the EPA.