The coke plant along the Monongahela River, viewed from Monessenâs downtown.
Kara Holsopple / The Allegheny Front
The coke plant along the Monongahela River, viewed from Monessenâs downtown.
Kara Holsopple / The Allegheny Front
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have climate plans to cut carbon emissions and prepare for the impacts of global warming. But what about the smaller cities and towns in-between? A free state program, in its second year, is helping to bridge the gap.
Monessen, a small city of about 7,000 in Westmoreland County, is one of participants in this yearâs cohort. Most of Monessen is on a hill, sloping towards the Monongahela River, but the downtown is flat â a floodplain.
Runoff from the hillside overwhelms storm drains, and if the river rises enough, it backs up into the 120 year-old sewer system. Businesses have been flooded, and Mayor Matt Shorraw says itâs happening more often with the increased precipitation from climate change.
âYou have these climate events happening, and we have systems that are built for things that happened 100 years ago, not whatâs happening now,â Shorraw said. âWe need to shift focus to that.â
This problem is one of the reasons he jumped at the chance to participate in the state Department of Environmental Protectionâs Local Climate Action Program or LCAP. This fall, 21 local boroughs and towns took an inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions, in areas like waste disposal, transportation, and industry. In the spring, theyâll create climate action plans.
âIâm hoping that we could also use the information to show people that we are serious about taking the next steps to create a better community, a healthier community,â Shorraw said. âAnd in turn, hopefully, attract more people here, and more businesses who appreciate that work.â
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Monessen was once a thriving, if dirty, mill town. The steel mill is gone, along with much of the population, but a coke-making facility remains along the river, adjacent to the downtown. Itâs on hot idle right now, because of the pandemic, and was recently sold to Ohio-based Cleveland-Cliffs Incorporated. But in 2017, ArcelorMittal, the plantâs former owner, agreed to a $1.8 million dollar settlement over air pollution violations.
Emissions data from the coke plant in Monessen are something that flagged Caity Millerâs attention. Miller, a senior at Susquehanna University, is interested in atmospheric science, and specifically in carbon emissions. Sheâs working on Monessenâs plan as her senior research project.
This fall, she and students from other schools working in the program are plugging municipal data into a tool called ClearPath, which converts that information into greenhouse gas emissions or carbon dioxide equivalents. According to the US EPA, in 2018, the coke plant in Monessen recorded nearly one hundred 50-thousand metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions.
âThatâs a pretty large chunk of CO2 emissions. Iâm interested to see how that stacks up against the rest of the cityâs emissions,â Miller said. âI think that can really indicate whether thereâs room for reductions here because it can be difficult to mitigate facility emissions like that without actual policy and legislation.â
Heidi Kunka, who oversees the Local Climate Action Program at DEP, said the students matched with LCAP-participating governments are a critical piece of support the program provides.
âIf thereâs one thing that Iâve experienced with this program is what the local governments need the most besides funding is human capital,â Kunka said. In turn, students receive real world experience and help in building their resumes.
The Pennsylvania Climate Action Plan calls for a 26 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, and an 80 percent reduction by 2050. It recommends 19 strategies to get there, and LCAP is one of them.
âThe impacts of climate change are experienced locally, like flooding and all of these extreme rain events that weâre seeing,â Kunka said. âState government needs to assist in supporting more resilient communities.â
The program, funded by the US Department of Energy, is first come, first serve, and Kunka said they havenât had trouble filling spots. Of the 20 participants in last yearâs cohort, the programâs first, 12 met the goal of creating a draft climate plan.
Bellefonte, in Centre County, officially adopted its climate action plan this September after participating in the first year of LCAP.
The plan includes dozens of staged goals like creating a trolley loop in the downtown to reduce traffic and improve accessibility by 2025, and by 2035, completing half of new sidewalk projects with permeable materials to soak up stormwater.
âThe first ones are more, I think, what you would consider to be low cost. As you get along further, it involves more of the community and more money,â said Joanne Tosti-Vasey, council president of the borough of about 6,200 residents outside of State College.
Tosti-Vasey said Bellefonteâs greenhouse gas inventory revealed that the residential sector was a big part of its emissions pie. One goal is increasing energy efficiency with things like LED lighting.
âAlmost half of our community is rental properties,â she said. âTheyâre inspected once every two years, and if we upgrade the code guidelines, then when [inspectors] go in they can say, âWell, hereâs an issue that you have with your lightsâŠand in order to meet codes now, you need to do these sorts of things.ââ
Tosti-Vasey says, to lead by example, theyâll start with the boroughâs buildings. Municipal leaders also want to hear what community members in Bellefonte want out of the plan. Initially, they sent a survey to random residents using utility bills, to gauge interest. Now that the plan is complete, its first directive is to convene an environmental advisory review board. From there, Bellefonte will plan the next steps of enacting the plan, according to Tosti-Vasey, like education programs and possibly grants to assist homeowners.
Monessen has a lot in common with Bellefonte and many other LCAP participants. Two-thirds of the census tracts in Monessen include environmental justice areas, defined by DEP as an area where at least 20 percent of residents live in poverty and/or 30 percent are people of color.
DEP provides access to information for these communities so they can participate in the permitting process for facilities, like Monessenâs coke plant, which can disproportionately impact them.
Allison Acevedo, DEPâs director of environmental justice, teaches one of the many webinars for participants in the LCAP. Hers is about how to approach community engagement for their climate plans.
âMany people have been focused on engaging communities from a place where âweâre finished with this process and we want your input,â â Acevedo said. âSo really thinking about how to engage communities in the process and not just the product.â
She says part of the training is also understanding that environmental justice doesnât just mean clean air and water, but could include things like considering if residents can afford to cool their homes as temperatures rise, or if there are enough street trees to shade neighborhoods.
In Monessen, TeâQuerra Turner stands behind the royal purple counter of Nefertitiâs Palace, which specializes in natural Black hair care products. She has lived her whole life in Monessen, and co-owns the shop, which just opened this summer on the main street in downtown.
Business is slow on this drizzly November day because of the pandemic. Turner says she hasnât experienced any flooding in the building, but she knows about the sewage problem. âAny time it rains, it comes up, and it smells in here. Weâve got to light incense,â she said.
Turner said she never really thinks about climate change. âI mean, we never really had any disasters, no earthquakes, no tornadoes,â Turner said. But she does recall that when she played basketball at the Salvation Army as a kid, the basement of the building had to be remodeled because of flooding.
Turner said sheâd like to learn more about the impacts of climate change, and the climate plan here. âThe last thing I need is for us to have a disaster downtown,â Turner said. âYouâre going to have to put more money back into your business if something gets destroyed. I wouldnât want that to happen.â
Monessen Mayor Matt Shorraw is counting on residents seeing the economic benefits of dealing with climate change in this city that depended so heavily on a carbon-polluting industry in the past. Heâd like to attract tech businesses to the area, and get more people to recycle and think about their waste stream.
âI think there are a lot of people in Monessen that believe in climate change, and that support environmental initiatives, but they either donât know how to talk about it or they just are afraid to talk about it because of the stigma thatâs associated with it,â Shorraw said.
Monessenâs city council, with which he has had a contentious relationship, just approved an environmental advisory board, and Shorraw says heâs eager to move on to the more hands-on work of making the climate plan a reality.
StateImpact Pennsylvania is a collaboration among WITF, WHYY, and the Allegheny Front. Reporters Reid Frazier, Rachel McDevitt and Susan Phillips cover the commonwealth’s energy economy. Read their reports on this site, and hear them on public radio stations across Pennsylvania.
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StateImpact Pennsylvania is a collaboration among WITF, WHYY, and the Allegheny Front. Reporters Reid Frazier, Rachel McDevitt and Susan Phillips cover the commonwealth’s energy economy. Read their reports on this site, and hear them on public radio stations across Pennsylvania.
Climate Solutions, a collaboration of news organizations, educational institutions and a theater company, uses engagement, education and storytelling to help central Pennsylvanians toward climate change literacy, resilience and adaptation. Our work will amplify how people are finding solutions to the challenges presented by a warming world.