On Sept. 16, a major fire broke out at Metalico Recycling, a junkyard located on Neville Island. There are still few details on what caused the fire in the first place; all that is known is that a stack of cars was burning. According to Allegheny County Clean Air Now (ACCAN), this is not even the first time that an environmentally sensitive event such as a hazardous material fire has occurred at Metalico. A similar fire took place in April 2021, resulting in promises to create a system to prevent another. It seems very little has been done to prevent this from happening yet another time, considering recent events.

Neville Island is one of the few areas somewhat close to downtown Pittsburgh left that have industries comparable to the Pittsburgh of the early 20th century – manufacturers, chemical plants and a steel processor serve as examples. It may not all be related to steel production, but it pollutes the air we breathe in a similar way. A huge cloud of burnt plastics and metal that made the air around campus difficult to breathe was not what I had wanted to experience that night, and it should not be something anybody ever has to experience, especially not now.

The biggest problem with facilities such as Metalico is that they have repeatedly misled the public on how safe their operations are. Their operating permit states that any visible pollution cannot leave its property lines, yet on Oct. 4, 2021, Metalico was served a Notice of Violation and Opportunity to Confer for violating exactly this. Listed on the notice, the EPA states that “emissions from Metalico’s material handling operations were visible at or beyond the Facility’s western property line.”

Can we really be so surprised that a facility that harms our environment is dishonest?

The worst part is that, despite being served multiple notices of violation and multiple lawsuits related to breaching their permit limiting how much they are allowed to pollute, seemingly nothing gets done about it. Unfortunately, this is not exclusive to facilities like Metalico either; the U.S. Steel-operated Clairton Coke Works has been known to be a major source of pollution for Clairton and beyond. This pollution extends through much of western PA, too. EQT’s Gahagan Well Pad is another example not too far away in Washington county; a drilling and fracking facility less than 1000 feet away from residents. Those who live near it have faced adverse effects for years and, of course, EQT just denies any wrongdoing.

Sadly, the list of polluters that are technically permitted to do so within western PA is seemingly endless. This is either because the facilities will knowingly violate their permits and are rich enough to pay their fines seemingly forever with no regard for the people that live near them, or they just deny the obvious. And the problem of polluting facilities that are somehow permitted to do so is not exclusive to the Pittsburgh area either – almost any compressor station or natural gas producer anywhere is guaranteed to be a “permitted polluter.” How it is even possible to, under no uncertain terms, get permission to destroy the environment we live in while countless companies are setting goals to be “carbon neutral” by some year in the near future is shocking and makes no sense to me. To achieve such a goal, facilities like Metalico should not be allowed to pollute at all. Does this make such goals unattainable before they are even attempted to be reached?

Unfortunately, it will be difficult to hold these facilities accountable, but when climate change continues to harm our planet, these companies will only be able to look the other way and pretend nothing is happening for so long.