Steenrod operations on the Chow ring of a classifying space

We use the Steenrod algebra to study $C{H}^{\ast }BG$, the mod $p$ Chow ring of the classifying space of $G$. We describe a localization property which relates a given $G$ to its elementary abelian subgroups, and we study a number of particular cases, namely symmetric groups and Chevalley groups. It turns out that the Chow rings of these groups are completely determined by the abelian subgroups and their fusion.