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The United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) released a series of what are described as “Sector Snapshots” that are stated to provide “baseline environmental and economic performance data for industry sectors participating in EPA’s Smart Sectors Program.”

EPA recently released a Sector Snapshot denominated “Iron and Steel.”

The Iron and Steel Sector Snapshot is particularly relevant to Arkansas because of the steel mini-mills located in the state. The Sector Snapshot includes mills that use electric arc furnaces. Electric arc furnaces melt steel scrap to produce new steel.

The Sector Snapshots are described as an interactive, web-based tool providing information about the environmental and economic performance of industry sectors. They were developed by EPA’s Smart Sectors Program. The Sector Snapshots are stated to show comprehensive, historical environmental economic performance on a sector basis and allow the user to visualize the data over the last 20 years.

Sector Snapshots display data for total air emissions, criteria air pollutants, water discharges, releases to land, and hazardous waste generation. The indicators are tailored based on data availability and relevance to the sectors’ operations.

EPA states that economic benchmarks available include dollar value of output in employment, and for some sectors, an indicator for production applicable to the sector.

A link to the EPA Iron & Steel Sector discussion can be found here.