Gary Works EPA Lawsuit Puts a Regulatory Clock on Northwest Indiana Steel

Four organizations, the Environmental Law & Policy Center, the Environmental Integrity Project, Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, and Just Transition Northwest Indiana, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against EPA and Administrator Lee Zeldin. The claim is procedural: EPA missed its mandatory 60-day Clean Air Act deadline to act on a July 2025 petition challenging IDEM's Title V permit renewal for Gary Works. EPA resolved the same groups' parallel petition against Cleveland-Cliffs' Indiana Harbor facilities in roughly eight months. The Gary Works petition, filed one month later, has gone ten-plus months with no response.

The statutory deadline carries the case on its own. The Cleveland-Cliffs comparison just makes it harder for EPA to argue for more delay, which makes a tight court-imposed schedule more likely. If a court orders EPA to act and EPA objects to the permit, the chain runs court order, EPA objection, IDEM permit revision, 18 months or more. Continuous emissions monitoring requirements and corrective-action plans could constrain blast furnace operations, and the timing overlaps with the planned relining of BF-14, a furnace carrying roughly 2.5 million tons of annual capacity. If you hold steel supply contracts or logistics exposure through Gary Works, assign someone to watch that D.C. docket now.