My family’s story is not unique. In fact, in Gary and many post-industrial or Rust Belt cities, it’s a cliché. All my grandparents were sharecroppers in Mississippi before migrating to Gary in the late 1920s. Both of my parents graduated from Roosevelt High. My dad worked in the mill on school breaks, but he joined the Navy to avoid taking a full-time job. After Gary elected its first Black mayor, my mom worked for the government in a job with great benefits and paid time off, one of the few places in America where a young Black woman could do so.
For my family, and thousands like mine, Gary was indeed the City of the Century.
While I never worked in the mill, the region’s steel mills made me what I am today. Its workers were the members that kept the church I grew up in open, the aunts and uncles who bought my Girl Scout cookies, and the neighbors who kept our block clean and safe.
Our city has changed, and the mill employs only a fraction of the people it used to, but our hopes and even our city’s destiny still very much depend on the future of our mill, Gary Works.
Our mayor, Eddie Melton, has dubbed Gary “America’s Greatest Comeback,” and that’s the truth. The city is vibrating higher than I’ve ever known with daily street cleanups, targeted demolition and planning for the new Lake County Convention Center. Most importantly, our city seems to have gotten its swagger back!
Could Gary mount this comeback without Gary Works? Probably. Yet Gary residents have endured a century of toxic air, land and water pollution to build U.S. Steel and make steel for the nation. They have paid the price of living with polluted air, land and water with elevated levels of cancer and respiratory diseases from blast furnaces that dump tons of fine particulate matter into the air in addition to thousands of tons of sulfur and nitrogen oxides and heavy metals such as lead, chromium and arsenic.
Now, new clean technology, known as direct reduction, is fast replacing the old, obsolete blast furnaces that have been polluting our community for more than 100 years. Adopting this technology would ensure that Gary Works would remain competitive far into the future, cutting in half health-harming pollution and aiding in the revitalization of the city’s core downtown area.
We must seize this new opportunity and commit to a future of steelmaking that is safe and sustainable.
We know that Nippon Steel has announced it will spend $3.1 billion at Gary Works through 2028. Around $800 million has already been committed to the relining of blast furnace No. 14 and other modifications. These investments leave sufficient money for Gary Works’ first direct-reduction furnace and additional equipment needed to convert the iron into high-grade steel. Making this investment now would be a long-term, sustainable plan.
I say all this in light of U.S. Steel’s announcement that its new mill in Osceola, Arkansas, will be powered by a direct-reduction furnace. But at Gary Works, it has committed only to relining blast furnace No. 14. That’s a Band-Aid, not a long-term plan. If U.S. Steel wants to remain competitive, it must begin switching to direct reduction now.
This move would also stabilize employment. A recent study from Indiana University showed that modernization would create thousands of short-term construction jobs, save existing steelworker jobs and potentially create new, permanent operating positions in solar and wind development.
In the short term, a reline may be necessary, but it is ultimately a shutdown plan unless it is accompanied by a plan to transition to more efficient and cleaner technologies.
This transition is due to the people of Gary. Nothing would signal Nippon’s commitment to being a good neighbor more than making the investments needed to reduce pollution and ensure the mill’s longevity.
The future of steelmaking in northwest Indiana is on the line, but it doesn’t need to be. Modernization would bring stability and cleaner air, and it would help redevelop the cities and towns within its footprint.
Gary is the home of the largest integrated steel mill in the country. It shouldn’t fail simply because it refused to move out of the 20th century and into the 21st.
Councilwoman Lori Latham represent the 1st District on the Gary Common Council.
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