Geneva Steel

[2] Columbia had opened a 120,000 tons/year blast furnace in Ironton in 1924 during a time of expansion from its home town of Pittsburg, California, that expansion had also included the acquisition of the Llewellyn Iron Works Torrance plant, which made Columbia one of the largest if not outright the largest steel business on the U.S. Pacific Coast prior to World War II.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into development.

Employment at the mill, the Horse Canyon coal mine and the limestone and dolomite quarry at Payson rose to slightly more than 2000.

In October 1948 Columbia Steel Co. opened a new 325,000 tons / year cold reduction and tin plate mill in Pittsburg, California.

During its operation Geneva Steel was important to Utah County's economy, providing thousands of jobs and attracting many ancillary businesses to the area.

On at least one occasion, Geneva Steel paid its workers in uncommon $2 bills intending to flood the local community with evidence of the plant's importance to the economy.

[2] In the late 1980s and early 1990s, students from Brigham Young University (BYU) protested the pollution, particularly the particulate matters, emitted from the steel operation.

They carried signs at the entrance of BYU football games that included slogans like, "Pollution makes God barf.

"[citation needed] The Cannon Brothers (Christopher and Joseph) bought the plant[2] with the help of Utah Senator Orrin Hatch.

The Utah Department of Environmental Quality is investigating the CH2M Hill study of the Geneva Steel site to determine if contaminated groundwater is moving beyond the facility boundary.

During its years of operation, the facility produced wastes contaminated with human carcinogens and hazardous substances including arsenic, lead, zinc, nickel, acids, PCBs and petroleum products.

Arsenic, ammonia, and benzene recently showed up in a number of groundwater monitoring wells around the perimeter of the plant.

[1] In 2014 Utah Valley University purchased 125 acres of the Geneva Steel site in order to expand to a new “West” Campus.