A bit of irony:
In February of 2019, I was at the Arcade & Attica RR in Arcade, NY to inspect their locomotive number 18's boiler and decide on what repairs would be needed. Subsequently, we had a conference call with the Arcade & Attica people, the US Federal RR Administration, and myself to discuss the current condition of that boiler and what repairs would be needed. The main issue was the fact the firebox on that boiler has to be replaced. In the course of discussion, the FRA men asked Arcade & Attica about their "firing practices" and the Arcade & Attica RR disclosed they'd had some problems with complaints to the EPA and similar about the smoke from Locomotive Number 18. Apparently, some people bought a house along the Arcade and Attica RR right of way. When the season opened for the tourist train (A & A RR moving revenue freight with a GE Center Cab diesel locomotive), the steam locomotive's coal smoke sent the new neighbors into a complete shit fit. The new neighbors sic'd the authorities on the A & A railroad, filed a complaint and some kind of violation or citation resulted. The arcade & Attica RR asked both the FRA and myself if we had any ideas as to how to move that locomotive and train past those neighbors with no smoke from the stack. There is a slight ascending grade leaving town, so the locomotive is worked a bit. I suggested they get up steam in their yard on soft coal as they always do, carry a thin bed with a heel (heavier area of the coal bed) back against the door sheet of the boiler and throw on a thin bed of coke. When the coke was going good and holding a good head of steam, make up onto the train and leave town firing on coke. Coke is smokeless. The next issue was where Arcade and Attica RR could get a few tons of coke to experiment with. Previously, Bethlehem Steel had a coke works in Buffalo at their Lackawanna Works. That Lackawanna Coke plant closed probably in the 90's. I found Tonawanda Coke's website on-line and forwarded it to Arcade and Attica RR. Tonawanda, NY is not all that far from Arcade, NY. Now, the Tonawanda Coke Plant is to be scrapped out.
I suspect the demise of the Tonawanda Coke Plant has a number of contributing factors. The owners of that plant probably were faced with a reduced demand for coke, and also saw the handwriting on the wall as far as being required to bring the plant into compliance environmentally. Those two factors combined to spell the end for the Tonawanda Coke Plant, I think. The major demand for coke would have been blast furnaces in steel mills. Another set of factors combined to spell the near-extinction of blast furnaces in the USA. An interesting factor is the move from steel mills that started with iron ore to the "re melt mills" which start with "processed scrap" (shredded scrap steel). The US has reached a kind of "critical mass" in which we produce enough scrap steel for recycling through the re-melt mills such that very little steel made from iron ore is needed. The principal need for steels made from iron ore is in the automotive and appliance industries where very ductile steels capable of being stamped or deep-drawn are needed. However, cars along with pickups and SUV's are getting lighter and using less steel (and going to composite materials, aluminum, and ever-thinner gauge steel). Add to this the fact that a new process is in use at the iron mines, which reduces the iron ore to a kind of raw iron. This process is fueled with natural gas, and the result is the taconite pellets that previously were produced at the iron mines are either exported, or used in smaller quantities in the USA. In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the iron mines are almost completely shut down with only one or two still working. This points to a drop in US mills with blast furnaces (aside from a drop in export sales of the taconite). Only a few blast furnace mills remain working in the USA, so the demand for coke is very small at best.
The owners of Tonawanda Coke saw the downward spiral in the steel industry's demand for coke, and they knew it was only a question of time before the environmental protection agencies and their regulations caught up with them. I think once those factors were converted into the economics of running the coke plant, the management opted to run it into the ground and declare bankruptcy. There are some hints as to how things were headed at that coke works. I noticed in the auction lots, there is a 2.5 megawatt Allis Chalmers steam turbo generator. It is an old unit, as A-C got out of steam turbine building after the infamous failure of "Big Allis" in the 1963 northeast blackout. I suspect the coke works management stopped maintaining the steam plant, making steam only for process rather than for power generation. The result is the large number of diesel generators listed in the auction. My guess is wherever the plant power buss supplied power, localized diesel generators were brought in and wired into the plant substations or directly into the motor control/load centers.
Interesting to note is the GE center cab locomotive was set up for remote operation (radio controlled). My guess is the bulk of the plant equipment will be scrapped where it sits. The auctioneers showed pictures of hopper cars, but listed them as "gondola" cars. At some point, Tonawanda Coke may well have been shipping the coke in railroad carload lots. I would not be surprised if the railroad equipment is cut up for scrap right where it sits, being too costly to move over mainline railroads (assuming it has roller bearings on the axles).
The coke plant site is likely a "brown field", having contaminated soil and plenty of hazmat to deal with. Bankruptcy may be a convenient way for the owners to escape or lessen the economic hit for the cleanup and remediation of the underlying soil.
40 + years go, when I was working in Marquette, Michigan, there was an abandoned charcoal and wood-chemical plant. It had been owned in joint by Cleveland-Cliffs Iron and Dow Chemical. It was known as the "Cliffs-Dow" works. A friend and sometime outlaw biker was renting (or so he claimed) space in the old plant complex. That plant covered acres, had railroad access, and many buildings. It included a boiler house with two pre-war Riley Stoker watertube boilers. Those boiler had been setup to run on wood tar, pulverized coal, or fuel oil. The boilers had supplied steam to a steam turbo generator, with extraction steam being sent around the complex for use in the various process. The turbo generator was long gone, but boilers were intact. In the generator room, the foundation for the generator and bus ducting was still there, and a blackboard still had a one-line diagram of the plant power distribution network. Men's work clothes were still in the lockers. Various railroad cars were still on the in-plant tracks. Piping ran between the various buildings, both above ground and in flooded tunnels. Some equipment remained, but anything of scrap value was long gone. I remember taking a mis-step on what looked like solid ground. It was actually wood tar and my work boot went in and got stuck. I pulled out and never could get that wood tar entirely off my work boot sole. Paperwork for what the mill had produced was blowing all over the landscape. In reading random pieces of office paperwork, I discovered that plant had made: charcoal made as briquettes, activated charcoal sold for filtration purposes, wood alcohol, creosote, sulphuric acid and a bunch more chemicals.
The plant site was an environmental hot potato. It sat adjacent to Northern Michigan University's campus for many years. Eventually, it was cleaned up and the college took some of the real estate to expand the campus onto. A buddy of mine told me his relatives had worked in that plant. The worst job in the plant was working the retorts, and it was a job new men were usually stuck with. My buddy said uncles of his had worked the retorts, and the smoke and dust were so thick they could not see a 100 watt lightbulb a few feet from them. Plenty of men died young from working in that plant. In poking around that plant, I found an actual "asbestos suit". It was a "boiler suit" or coverall made of woven asbestos material- the stuff used at that time for welding blankets. Evidently, conditions were such that men had to work wearing asbestos suits due to high temperatures and probably glowing charcoal when the retorts were opened.
Corporations did not care a hang for the overall health and well being or their workers or the adjacent communities in those plants. At the time, I was working as a mechanical engineer on a powerplant construction project, and firing a steam locomotive on a tourist railroad on some weekends. One Saturday morning, I was at the locomotive early to start raising steam. A man whom I only knew as "Cecil" appeared and gimped out of his old car and made his way to a bench. He called me over. His old car was brush-painted, and covered with religious stickers. Cecil told me to sit down, and I figured he'd try to get religion into me. Instead, he proceeded to give me a lecture about safety around railroad equipment, tracks, switches and the like. It turned out Cecil had been a brakeman on the Soo Line in the 1940's following WWII. One winter day, he was on a freight train that was working the Cliffs-Dow wood chemical plant. Conditions were icy, and Cecil lost his footing and his legs slid across the rails between the trucks on the train they were switching. Just that quick the wheels passed over his legs, taking them right off. Luckily for Cecil, his conductor had been a medic in WWII and kept his head. The conductor got torniquets on what remained of Cecil's legs and saved his life. Cecil lost both legs above the knees. Because the accident happened on the Cliffs-Dow trackage, they were responsible for his medical bills and aftercare. Cecil said that he got prosthetic legs every so many years, and Dow Chemical's attorneys bitched about that. He also said the stumps of his legs would become chafed and infected, and he had to see doctors and get prescriptions filled. The result was at least once a year, Dow Chemical's attorneys would contact Cecil and try to get him to take a one-time settlement. He would tell the attorneys and Dow that he hoped they burned in hell, and probably kept refusing the settlement offer until he died.
Cecil went from being someone who appeared as a down-at-the-heels religious fanatic to someone I listened to. He told me about ice in the flangeways of a crossing on the Dow property and gave me quite a lecture about how to get on and off moving railroad equipment, watching my footing and plenty more. What also stuck with me was the fact that a huge corporate would bother with trying to avoid paying recurring medical costs for a man injured on their property in the line of duty.
I watched a youtube about the environmental issues surrounding both Tonawanda and Erie Coke works. As easy as it is for me to side with the coke works, I tend to side with the citizens who live nearby and have their health affected by the coke works. If a coke works is to remain in operation, it could be done with proper environmental controls. The health hazards from stack emissions and liquid seepage into the acquifers from coke works is a well settled thing. Running a coke works or any plant producing toxic wastes or having hazmat that might seep into the acquifers can be done responsibly, but the economics and regulatory oversight are unwieldly. The result is not unlike the robber barons of an earlier age. Run a plant that pollutes and affects the health of the surrounding population as long as possible; have attorneys handling violations and answering summonses and subpoenas and getting continuances and extensions; pay fines if they are "chump change" and consider them the "cost of doing business" rather than putting things to rights; when all extensions and delays are exhausted it is time to run the plant into the ground (and probably take some kind of depreciation or tax write-offs); then cut and run, hiding behind bankruptcy or some other corporate maneuvers. It's a predictable M.O. and what corporate thinking is the world over. Of course, the other side of the coin is to simply import coke from countries where there are minimal-if any- environmental regulations. I tend to be quite cynical about corporate thinking. Corporations will put on a good song-and-dance about wanting to "go green", being environmentally responsible, and all sorts of similar blather. When it comes to their bottom line, all the mission statements and slick website information about their wanting to be a good neighbor, save the planet and similar is just so much BS.
The cokeworks are small potatoes in this sort of game. I kind of doubt there was any significant demand for the coke anymore, so it was time for the management to cut and run.