One problem with U.S. Steel’s plant in Clairton, Penn. is that it can’t stop exploding. It happened in 2009, and killed a maintenance worker. It happened in 2010, and sent 20 men to the hospital. It happened in 2018, and disabled the plant’s pollution controls, making the air stink of smoke and rotten eggs.
For a while, U.S. Steel signaled publicly that it might do something to stop these incidents—something like a $1.3 billion upgrade. But that was little more than apocrypha. Behind closed doors, the eyes of steel executives had drifted elsewhere, some fifty miles up the Mississippi River from Memphis, to the tiny town of Osceola, Arkansas, where the taxes are low, the labor is cheap, and the county—desperate for economic growth—will spend millions to attract investment.
Profits have been rocky for U.S. Steel over the past few years, and a string of pollution fines have deflated their public image. But the steel mill in Osceola claims to be clean, cheap, and green, a break from the dirty mills of Western Pennsylvania. U.S. Steel shelled out $1.5 billion for the plant. They recently announced another $3 billion expansion. The mill is on track to become the #1 steel-producer in America.
At long last, U.S. Steel has joined the scramble for clean steel. America’s dirtiest industry is cleaning itself up. And the biggest motivation is profit.
To make steel, you need heat. The grimy, hulking steel plants of Western Pennsylvania—think smokestacks and black ash—use coal to generate heat, a fossil fuel so pollutive that the name alone makes environmentalists shudder. Up until 2019, U.S. Steel powered all of their blast furnaces with coal.
But the plant in Osceola uses electricity—not coal—to heat materials. Electric furnaces, powered by an adjacent solar farm, melt down scrap steel, which is then recast as new steel. The whole complex is more of a recycling operation than a manufacturing one. This style of steel-making, known colloquially as “mini-mills,” has been around since the 1960s, but before Osceola, U.S. Steel had exhibited a dogged and mystifying disinterest in the new technology.
U.S. Steel used to be something of a big boss. They used to spew chemicals into the air without a drop of shame. They used to put up white billboards with stilted messages like “Continuous Improvement to Environment,” and when the paint turned black from soot, no one would bat an eye. You had asthma as a child, and cancer as an adult. You went to the Carnegie Library, walked in Frick Park, and then cheered for the Steelers on Sundays. This was life in an American milltown.
What could you do? Steel was money, and money was otherwise hard to come by. But in the 1980s, after an environmental reckoning in America, pressure mounted against U.S. Steel. They faced a dilemma similar to the one today: producing cleaner steel—or, at least steel that was less dirty—required new technology, and new technology meant fewer jobs. Just as residents had feared, money grew scarce. The mill towns of Western Pennsylvania fell into financial destitution.
This was no hiccup, but the start of a long fall. In the 1940s, more than 300,000 people worked for U.S. Steel. Today, the number is 20,000. People use words like “heritage” and “legacy” when talking about U.S. Steel, as if it’s more artifact than operational. Big boss no more, U.S. Steel has become the bleary-eyed grandfather of steel.
U.S. Steel reported losses of $900 million in 2020. For a moment, it looked as if the pandemic would cripple the economic leviathan for good. But the company took a sharp turn in 2021, when C.E.O. David Burritt, a pale, spindly man with wire-frame glasses, announced that U.S. Steel’s new priority would be achieving zero carbon emissions by 2050.
“In the wake of the 2020 pandemic and the increased urgency of the climate crisis,” Burritt explained, his lips taut and thin, “we are reviewing all projects with an even greater focus on steelmaking’s future in a rapidly decarbonizing world.”
“The Future of Steel” is the tagline for U.S. Steel’s $3 billion expansion in Osceola, Arkansas. Clif Chitwood, an Osceola native and the head of development in northeast Arkansas, walks through the plant’s blueprints with child-like glee.
“They heat steel in a clay pot the size of a two-story house,” he exclaims, pointing at an intricate diagram of the plant’s bowels. When he says “steel,” his heavy Southern accent draws out the e’s. “Steeeel.”
Chitwood has reason to be enthusiastic. He has been president of the region’s economic development for 25 years; more than anyone, it’s Chitwood that’s responsible for creating a steel industry in Northeast Arkansas, and it’s him who sees its payoff. “Three years ago, I thought to myself ‘well, maybe you’ve done your job, but I don’t see your town getting any better.’ But all of a sudden, things started to happen.”
When Chitwood was a boy in the 1960s, Osceola was the place to be. Big churches, rotary clubs, schools that graduated doctors and lawyers—a “classic American town” on the banks of the Mississippi River. But cotton died, industry left, and the population fell by half. Now, Osceola is mostly poor, mostly Black, mostly a ghost town of better days. Shuttered storefronts fill the downtown, as do chipped sidewalks. The local paper has three sections: “News,” “Sports” and “Obituaries.”
“These were proud, prosperous towns,” explains Chitwood. “We lost a lot.” But steel promises a new chapter for Osceola. “It’s hard not to be optimistic,” he says. “It took them a day and a half to close down the shoe factory in Osceola. But the steel plant’s not going anywhere. Neither is the demand for steel.”
“They’re using technology that has never been used in Arkansas” explains Rex Nelson, a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “It’s the cleanest steel mill ever built.”
There are now four steel mills in the county, two owned by the steel company Nucor, and two owned by U.S. Steel. Each one has a site on the Mississippi River. All of them employ Electric Arc Furnaces (EAFs) to produce recycled steel. All of them were built after 1985. So far, the plant in Osceola is the only out of these four—and the only steel mill in America—to receive certification from ResponsibleSteel, a nonprofit that monitors low-carbon steel production.
This means that Osceola, a crumbling town in Arkansas, now boasts America’s most cutting-edge steel mill.Why here? Why in this tiny, unassuming corner of a poor and rural state?
Arkansas makes sense for the reasons western Pennsylvania made sense—rivers, for one, a dirt-cheap way to bring in scrap and send out steel. Then there’s the railroad, a freight line that cuts up from Birmingham and Memphis, and an interstate that runs along the Mississippi River. The county is flat, agricultural, huge, and for the most part, empty.
Better yet, there are no unions, no democrats, and certainly no pesky environmentalists to fire up the far-off Arkansas Division of Environment. The Osceola plant sits in the middle of a field—if it explodes, who would know? Who would care? A feeling of confidence pervades northeast Arkansas — we have all the parts — but so does a self-aware urgency— what else do we have?
So, Arkansas plays nice. There were 40 other locations in the running for U.S. Steel’s $3 billion project, but Osceola won out thanks to a package of incentives offered by state and county officials. It was a win-win deal for the company and the town. U.S. Steel credited the decision to the Arkansans “who will go the extra mile to compete for opportunities.” Osceola’s former mayor described the project as “winning a mega-billion dollar lottery.”
Behind these negotiations is a tax-funded advertising campaign run by the Great River Economic Foundation, a non-profit formed in the 1990s. This body has facilitated every steel project in the past eighteen years, bringing the region nearly 5,000 jobs and $4 billion in investment.
Since 2002, they’ve operated under the slogan “From Cotton to Steel.” This plays off many points; evolution, yes, but also an appeal to the good ol’ days of booming business, a nostalgia U.S. Steel knows all too well. A century ago, Mississippi County produced more cotton than anywhere in America. When U.S. Steel’s expansion is complete in 2024, Mississippi County will hold the same title for steel. Cotton once thrived, the logic goes. Why can’t steel?
Unlike the “Steel City” of Pittsburgh, the association between steel and Arkansas is not yet automatic. But Great River Economic Foundation has a fix for that too; they’ve devised a new nickname for Northeast Arkansas, calling it the “steel mill heaven.” Now, their hands are everywhere, in potential sites, industry-starved communities, technical colleges, all to fine-tune an edenic portrait of an otherwise desperate place. Heaven might not have much, but it is the best place to make cheap, clean steel.
People’s biggest gripe with Northeast Arkansas is that there’s no good reason to stay. No nice towns, no good jobs, no bars or bike trails. But with the U.S. Steel’s expansion in Osceola, change is coming fast.
“We’ve turned a corner.” Osceola Mayor Joe Harris told me, when I asked him about the town’s future. “We’ve got 65 new homes going up. We haven’t had a subdivision in Osceola in the last 27 years.” Harris, a 71-year-old trucking magnate who served on the Arkansas state legislature, speaks in the same slow, Southern accent as Clif Chitwood. He has the mannerisms of a businessman, leaning far back in his chair, crossing his arms when he speaks.
Harris grew up in Osceola. Like Chitwood, he can painfully recall the city’s decline. Unlike Chitword, he is Black, and still resides within the town limits of Osceola, where the housing crisis is one of too many empty, dilapidated structures. Much of Harris’ vision for the town depends on what he calls “cleaning up.”
“We have to clean up first, and then we can sell the town,” explains Harris. “Just like a car or a home.”
Harris agrees that the steel industry has been a “tremendous financial contribution” to the region.“They’ve been great community partners,” he tells me, without a moment of hesitation. “They’ve built parks, made contributions to our schools. Our residents are very happy about this change.”
But where there is money, there is competition. Eleven miles south of Osceola, another wilted, rural town is vying to be the destination for steel executives: Wilson, Arkansas. The former heart of “Boss” Lee Wilson’s sharecropping empire, the town was purchased by billionaire investor Gaylon Lawrence Jr. in 2014. His goal is to make Wilson a place where Arkansans can enjoy art galleries and British car shows without leaving the state.
All this means that for the first time in decades, there are good reasons to stay in Northeast Arkansas. Young people can attend the two-year Steel program at Arkansas Northeastern College; move into jobs that pay on average $150,000; and purchase one of Mississippi County’s new homes through the “Work Here, Live Here,” under which their employer will cover 10% of their house cost. Since 2014, they can even send their children to a small private academy, The Delta School.
The residents of Osceola are wary of another town stealing their spotlight. In 2020, when rumors of U.S. Steel’s Osceola expansion began, the city promptly formed a community development committee to overhaul everything: two new housing subdivisions, a major hotel, a new grocery store, and a new sewage system. There is a small window of time to capitalize on U.S. Steel’s momentum.
Mayor Harris feels the heat. But he is anchored by a sense of duty. “I love this town,” he says, gazing out his office window. “I am still here in Osceola. Steel can be our savior.”
When steel is recast, it loses none of its properties. Steel is metamorphic. The furnace is indiscriminate, devouring anything—a rusted car frame, a broken saucepan—and producing something brand-new. In the core of the heat, impurities melt away.
It seems that U.S. Steel hopes to do the same. Soon, the mill in Osceola will take on the rhythms and rumblings of industry, and it’s hard not to note that the country’s oldest steel company will produce its highest-tech steel. That within a few years, one of America’s greatest polluters found itself on the forefront of sustainable steel — and that financial trouble was the final push.
The second life of U.S. Steel is now rising above the cotton fields of Arkansas, boxy, blue, and sprawling. Its enormity is rivaled only by the river and the sky.