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The heart of steel country used to sit in the northern tip of West Virginia, sandwiched between Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania.
“Weirton Steel was the largest taxpayer in West Virginia for decades. We also were the largest employer,” said Paul Zuros, the Hancock County Administrator. “We became the fifth largest independent steel producer in the country, in the world really. I mean, it was huge.”
At its height, Weirton Steel employed about 14,000 people in the 1950s and 1960s.
But last month, production ended as the last tin mill operating was idled.
“We didn’t do anything wrong. Workers busted their butts. They didn’t do anything wrong,” said Mark Glyptis, the longtime president of United Steelworkers Local 2911. “The government turned their back on us.”
Like so many industrial communities across the Midwest, Weirton is trying to figure out how to reinvent itself after the once-booming United States steel industry disappeared as foreign steel imports were embraced.
After years spent watching their city’s sprawling steel site shrink, residents are now tracking something new being built on the very same grounds – a battery plant. And it comes right as the 2024 presidential election is approaching.
“I think the people here in this valley are extremely excited for it,” Zuros told Spectrum News.
Zuros has deep roots in Weirton.
“My family has been here for, aw jeez, more than 100 years now,” Zuros said.
His father, grandparents, and great grandparents worked for Weirton Steel. Now, in addition to his role as county administrator, Zuros helps maintain a museum on Main Street to tell the city’s story.
“Where the Form Factory is being built is right here. This is all Form Factory now,” he said, gesturing toward a giant print of the Weirton Steel plant back in the day.
Form Energy is the company building a new plant on the grounds that once housed Weirton Steel. It will produce cutting-edge batteries that can store power generated by clean energy sources like solar and wind.
Glytpis, the local union president, calls it encouraging.
“It’s a good thing for America, and this valley, for sure,” he said.
The plant is being built with incentives from President Joe Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. According to Form Energy, it will provide Weirton with at least 750 new jobs.
“This would not happen without the Inflation Reduction Act. It would not have happened without it,” West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin said at the plant’s groundbreaking ceremony last year. Manchin was a key architect behind the legislation.
Form Energy’s CEO also gave the bill a shoutout.
“Sen. Manchin and his efforts with the Inflation Reduction Act has accelerated our path to scale up in commercialization,” Mateo Jaramillo said.
The plant is one of hundreds of renewable energy and electric vehicle projects benefiting from Biden’s legislation, which is aimed at creating new manufacturing jobs and speeding the transition to green energy.
Last June, Biden spoke specifically about Form Energy at an event in Chicago.
“It’s being built on the same exact site,” Biden said of the battery plant. “Bringing back 750 good paying jobs. Bringing back a sense of pride and hope for the future, for all the people of Weirton.”
A Form Energy official told Spectrum News the company had been interested in Weirton before the climate bill became law, but once it passed, the legislation helped to speed up the site selection process and funding. An additional $290 million in state incentives helped sweeten the deal.
Like in that visit to Chicago, Biden, as he runs for reelection, has been touring the country to highlight how his policies are creating jobs.
Earlier this month in the battleground state of Wisconsin, the president showcased an AI datacenter that Microsoft is building on land once set aside for a Trump administration project that never panned out.
“On my watch, we make promises and we keep promises,” Biden told the crowd.
A 2023 analysis from POLITICO found that roughly two-thirds of the projects aided by Biden’s climate law are located in Republican districts.
In Weirton, where flags supporting former President Donald Trump still fly outside many homes and a Trump merchandise tent was set up on the edge of town, the Biden campaign is not expecting to make significant inroads; Trump won the county with 70% of the vote in 2020.
Residents Spectrum News spoke with said they did not know about the connection between Biden’s policies and the new battery plant – or they did not care.
“Just because a plant comes into town – whether he had his little imprint on it, I wasn’t aware of that,” Mark Steven Watson said. “This is Trump country. It’s very loyal and dedicated and committed.”
A few blocks away from the old Weirton Steel plant, Heidi Baranowski was critical of Biden.
“Any of his promises that were made were not kept,” she said. “And I think that a lot of people around here who were Democrats are probably Republicans now, or close to it, because Trump has promised and tried to put a foot forward on the promises.”
At Dee Jay’s, a rib restaurant and Weirton institution, owner Mike Sherbak said his customers do talk about the new plant, but not in a political sense.
“I don’t think that it’s going to be established enough to affect this round of elections,” he said.
According to Sam Workman, a political scientist at West Virginia University, voters in Weirton – and across the state – are more focused on the immediate, like the cost of living.
“While Biden is probably as pro-labor as any president in my lifetime, you know, when that coincides with higher prices at pumps and for milk, bread, and that sort of stuff, you know, that sort of detracts from that overall message,” Workman said.
Whether voters in places like Weirton begin to credit Biden for projects like this one remains to be seen. The election is still five months away. The new battery plant is expected to open later this year.