Don’t attack US industry to save EPA jobs

As president of S.H. Bell Co., a small family-owned and -operated warehousing and logistics company, I must respond to the extremely inflammatory and factually incorrect March 8 opinion piece written by John O’Grady, U.S. EPA union president.

In his misguided attempt to voice opposition to cutbacks at the EPA, O’Grady disparages the integrity of all U.S. industry by saying that “industry is poisoning our communities.”

{mosads}This is an outrageous mischaracterization of our country’s economic engine, and a slap in the face to millions of our nation’s industrial workers. I am left to wonder how O’Grady can make any fair and sound decisions on behalf of the EPA when that apparently is his foundational belief about industry in our country.

The misinformation and outlandish statements continue as O’Grady hones in on my company. Among the many inaccurate statements is that EPA scientists “caught and stopped S.H. Bell from poisoning people with harmful levels of a neurotoxin called manganese.” This is absolutely untrue. According to the EPA’s own approved science, the manganese emissions from our facilities were and are within safe levels as evidenced by data recorded by metal monitors nearby and on our properties.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no evidence that emissions from S.H. Bell have ever caused even one case of manganism, as implied by O’Grady. Only chronic or long-term exposure to extremely high levels of airborne manganese can be a cause for health concerns, and the data proves this is not the case in the communities where our facilities are located.

O’Grady takes aim as well at the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, accusing it of doing nothing about manganese in the East Liverpool, Ohio, community. Perhaps this is because the Ohio EPA strongly questioned the finding of a health concern in East Liverpool and based its questioning on the U.S. EPA’s own published science.

In 2015, recognizing best-available science, the EPA formally adopted in final rule-making a very conservative screening level for ambient manganese levels, which EPA intentionally ignores when it comes to East Liverpool and our company. 

As a business, we must follow these federally regulated standards for operation or face severe penalties. We know and accept that. What we can’t do is try to operate under conditions where the regulators disagree, fail to provide us with fair notice of the required regulatory conduct, and decide to single out our business as the battleground for imposing new and unscientifically proven standards. It seems like regulation roulette with little or no regard to the impact on jobs and lives. It’s also very troubling and confusing for all companies, not just ours, when the U.S. EPA attacks its own state counterpart agency.

Over the past several years, our company has invested more than $2 million in environmental control measures at our facilities in order to ensure that we are in full compliance with federal, state and local regulations. That’s a big investment for a company our size. However, we are committed to operating legally and responsibly — for the protection of the communities we operate in and the employees we value. We want to continue employing as many people as we can, just as O’Grady wants to keep EPA workers employed.

John Bell is president of S.H. Bell Company, founded in 1933 and owned and operated by his family for four generations. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, it provides handling, processing, packaging, transportation and warehousing services for more than 80 mineral and metal products used in steel, metals, energy and related industries, with operations in five states.