It was only a few months after moving from Louisville to Middletown, Ohio, four years ago when six-year-old Vivian Adams’ asthma worsened.
He says: “My daughter was born prematurely so she already had lung problems.[but] it has gotten worse. He is always sick and coughing and can’t breathe. He had to take his daily medication for his asthma, and he has a life-saving inhaler.
All the while, pollution from the Cleveland-Cliffs coal-fired steel plant behind his house has been there.
It is the plant where James Vance, grandfather of the US vice president, JD Vance, worked for years. Vance, who was born and raised in Middletown, has repeatedly called clean energy projects a “scam.” As a senator from Ohio, his election campaigns were supported by fossil fuel companies.
But for Adams, with his family close to the steel mill, anything is better than what he has to deal with once he gets out.
“We’re sitting in our seats and there’s a bunch of black stuff on them, in our car, it’s smoke, it’s on their toys, so you can’t leave them outside,” says Adams.
Recent events mean that none of this will change for him or the hundreds of other Middletown residents who live in the shadow of the giant coke-burning steel plant.
New permit documents on the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s website show Cleveland-Cliffs plans to refurbish a blast furnace at its Middletown facility — a multi-hundred-million-dollar project that could put fuel burning at the facility for at least another 15 to 18 years.
The locals are shocked.
“It’s awful,” Adams says. “Some days it smells really good.”
Last summer, Lourenco Goncalves, CEO of Cleveland-Cliffs, used Donald Trump’s words to inform investors that he had a “good coal, good coke” development vision at the plant. The No 3 blast furnace, which was first installed in the 1950s, uses hundreds of thousands of tonnes of coke each year to produce around 3m tonnes of pig iron annually.
The move follows the end of the Trump-Vance administration’s $500m grant for a facility to retrofit coke-burning facilities with a hydrogen-powered furnace, which some reports would have made the Middletown facility the world’s lowest-emitting steel plant.
Instead, citizens may find themselves locked in decades of environmental hazards in a dirty, chemically polluted environment. Although the Biden administration has tried to clean up the steel industry, last year Goncalves told Politico: “I believe what Trump is trying to do is improve the country.”
Emails sent to Cleveland-Cliffs asking if Department of Energy funds earmarked for the proposed hydrogen-powered facility would be redistributed to cover the cost of the reline went unanswered. Emails sent to the Department of Energy in Washington DC asking similar questions did not receive a response.
“Cleveland-Cliffs is already a large generator of hazardous waste and is responsible for determining whether any waste from this operation is hazardous or non-hazardous and managing it appropriately,” said Anthony Chenault of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
Chenault could not predict how much waste the blast furnace would produce, how the waste would be separated or where it would be disposed of.
“Disposal options are determined by the agency, according to federal and state requirements,” says Chenault.
A 2024 report by Industrious Labs, a nonprofit that advocates removing carbon monoxide from heavy industries across the US, found that Middletown Works is among the top 10 emitters of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and other pollutants among more than 650 emitters in Ohio.
“Based on the estimated health impact of the Middletown steel mill and its coke supplier, SunCoke Energy, and assuming that pollution and population conditions remain constant, we estimate that in the 18 years following the closure of the Middletown Works premature deaths of 810 to 1,476, 132,300 lost school lives,” and more many said.
The site is the 11th worst carbon monoxide emitter in the country, according to data from the EPA’s National Emissions Inventory collected in 2020.
Adjacent to the Middletown Works is the SunCoke Energy plant, which has the capacity to burn about 550,000 tons of coal per year to make coke, which contributes to the high pollution levels in the area.
“Together, these two utilities account for more than half of Ohio’s health impacts from iron and coke plant pollution, contributing to an estimated $1.3bn to $2.3bn in health costs annually in the state,” Criste said.
Despite the aid that the Trump administration has given to US steel producers, the industry recorded a growth of only 3% last year, according to figures released last month.
Last year, Cleveland-Cliffs closed its iron ore and taconite mine in Minnesota with the loss of 600 jobs, and in January, the company announced more layoffs. In February, it announced a combined loss of $600m in revenue for 2025. Goncalves blamed auto production issues and “bad energy” in the Canadian market, among other reasons, for the decline.
The price of imported steel fell by 12.6% last year mainly due to tariffs.
Critics argue that few outside of steel like Goncalves see the benefit of the tariff system. Industries such as automobiles have seen significant declines due to falling consumer demand fueled by high steel costs.
Cleveland-Cliffs, the largest producer of flat steel in North America, employs about 25,000 people in Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ontario, and now, with the blessing of the Trump administration, many people in nearby cities face years of dealing with bad air pollution.
Last month, the company announced its Burns Harbor Works facility in Indiana is also set to refurbish its blast furnace next year. The plant is located near Indiana’s only national park on the south shore of Lake Michigan near several towns. The American Lung Association ranks Porter County, home of the Burns Harbor Works, “F” for high ozone days and 24-hour air pollution.
For Vivian Adams and her children aged nine, six and four in Middletown, the news of the blast furnace reline comes as a big disappointment because she hopes to buy the house she is currently renting.
“It’s everything we need or want,” she says outside her home, where, on a recent Friday evening, she waits for her children to get off their school bus.
The company sends workers to residents’ areas to pressure them to clean the smoke and chemical dust from their homes. On one occasion, Adams says, the workers broke down the door: “They are doing the worst job in the world.”
He says if he could talk to Vance, who grew up four miles away, he would ask him to pursue the clean, hydrogen-powered model introduced by the previous administration.
He says: “If this is in cars, imagine what happens in our lungs?”
#expensive #project #Vances #hometown #steel #plant #operating #Locals #shocked #terrible