{"id":568972,"date":"2026-03-29T16:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T16:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/568972\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T16:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T16:37:09","slug":"a-costly-plan-will-keep-a-steel-plant-in-jd-vances-hometown-running-locals-are-aghast-its-horrible-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/568972\/","title":{"rendered":"A costly plan will keep a steel plant in JD Vance\u2019s hometown running. Locals are aghast: \u2018It\u2019s horrible\u2019 | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was just a few months after moving from Louisville to Middletown, Ohio<\/a>, four years ago that Vivian Adams\u2019s six-year-old daughter\u2019s asthma problem worsened.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy daughter was born prematurely so she already had lung issues,\u201d she says, \u201c[but] it\u2019s gotten worse. She stays sick and coughing and can\u2019t breathe. She\u2019s had to go on everyday medication for her asthma, plus she has a rescue inhaler.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the while, pollution from the coal-burning Cleveland-Cliffs steel<\/a> plant several hundred yards behind her home has been ever-present.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same plant that James Vance, the grandfather of the US vice-president, JD Vance, worked at for years. Vance, born and raised in Middletown, has repeatedly referred to clean energy projects<\/a> as a \u201cscam\u201d. As an Ohio senator, his election campaigns were partly bankrolled<\/a> by fossil fuel companies.<\/p>\n

But for Adams, given her family\u2019s proximity to the steel plant, anything is better than what she has to deal with as soon as she steps outside.<\/p>\n

Adams says: \u201cWe sit on our chairs and there\u2019s a bunch of black stuff on them, on our vehicle, it\u2019s soot. It\u2019s on their toys, so you can\u2019t leave them outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recent events mean that none of this is likely to change for her or the hundreds of other Middletown residents who live in the shadow of the big, coke-burning steel plant.<\/p>\n

New permitting documents on the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency<\/a>\u2019s website show Cleveland-Cliffs is planning to reline the blast furnace at its Middletown facility \u2013 a several-hundred-million-dollar move that would usher in fossil-fuel burning at the facility for at least another 15 to 18 years.<\/p>\n

Local residents are aghast.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s horrible,\u201d Adams says. \u201cThe smell some days is absolutely awful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last summer, Lourenco Goncalves, the CEO of Cleveland-Cliffs, used Donald Trump\u2019s verbiage to announce to investors<\/a> that he envisioned a \u201cbeautiful coal, beautiful coke\u201d upgrade to the plant. The No 3 blast furnace, first installed in the 1950s, uses hundreds of thousands of tons of coke every year to produce around 3m tons of raw steel annually.<\/p>\n

The move follows the Trump-Vance administration\u2019s ending of a $500m grant for the facility to replace the coke-burning infrastructure with a hydrogen-powered furnace that, by some accounts<\/a>, would have resulted in the Middletown facility becoming the lowest greenhouse gas-emitting steel plant in the world.<\/p>\n

Instead, residents could find themselves locked into decades more of dirty, chemical-polluted environmental risks. Despite the Biden administration\u2019s attempts at cleaning up the steel industry, last year Goncalves told Politico<\/a>: \u201cI believe what Trump\u2019s trying to do is for the betterment of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emails sent to Cleveland-Cliffs asking whether the Department of Energy money previously designated to the proposed hydrogen-powered infrastructure was to be reallocated to pay for the cost of the reline were not responded to. Emails sent to the Department of Energy in Washington DC asking similar questions did not receive a response.<\/p>\n

\u201cCleveland-Cliffs is already a large quantity generator of hazardous waste and is responsible for determining whether any waste from this work is hazardous or non-hazardous and managing it accordingly,\u201d says Anthony Chenault of the Ohio<\/a> Environmental Protection Agency.<\/p>\n

Chenault wasn\u2019t able to estimate what volume of waste material the blast furnace reline would generate, how the waste material would be classified or specifically where it would be disposed.<\/p>\n

\u201cDisposal options are selected by the facility, consistent with state and federal requirements,\u201d Chenault says.<\/p>\n

A 2024 report<\/a> by Industrious Labs, a non-profit advocating to decarbonize heavy industries across the US, found that Middletown Works ranks among the top 10 emitters of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and other pollutants among more than 650 emitters in Ohio.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased off the estimated health impact<\/a> of the Middletown steel mill and its coke supplier, SunCoke Energy, and assuming that pollution and population levels remain constant, we estimate over the 18 years following the relining of Middletown Works 810 to 1,476 premature deaths, 132,300 lost school days,\u201d and a host of other health ailments, says Ariana Criste of Industrious Labs.<\/p>\n

The site is the 11th worst emitter of carbon monoxide in the country, according to data from the EPA\u2019s National Emissions Inventory database collected in 2020.<\/p>\n

Next door to Middletown Works is the SunCoke Energy facility, which has the capacity to burn up to 550,000 tons of coal a year to create coke, contributing to high pollutant levels in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether, these two facilities account for over half of Ohio\u2019s total health impacts from steel and coke plant pollution, contributing to an estimated $1.3bn to $2.3bn in health costs annually in the state,\u201d Criste says.<\/p>\n

Despite the help that Trump\u2019s tariff regime have given to US steelmakers, the industry reported growth of just 3%<\/a> last year, according to figures released last month.<\/p>\n

Last year, Cleveland-Cliffs idled an iron ore and a taconite mine in Minnesota with the loss of 600 jobs, and in January, the company announced further layoffs. In February, it announced<\/a> consolidated revenue losses of $600m for 2025. Goncalves blamed automotive production issues and a \u201cnewly adverse dynamic\u201d in the Canadian market, among other reasons, for the decline.<\/p>\n

Steel imports fell 12.6%<\/a> last year largely due to the tariffs.<\/p>\n

Analysts argue<\/a> that few beyond steel barons such as Goncalves are seeing a benefit of the tariffs regime. Industries such as automotive have seen massive layoffs<\/a> due to falling demand from consumers spurred by higher steel costs.<\/p>\n

The largest producer of flat-roll steel in North America, Cleveland-Cliffs employs about 25,000 people in Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ontario, and now, with the Trump administration\u2019s blessing, many people in adjacent communities face many more years dealing with adverse air pollution.<\/p>\n

Last month, the company announced<\/a> its Burns Harbor Works facility in Indiana is also set to reline its blast furnace next year. The plant is situated next to Indiana\u2019s only national park and on the southern shore of Lake Michigan within short proximity to several towns. The American Lung Association ranks<\/a> Porter county, home to Burns Harbor Works, an \u201cF\u201d on high ozone days and 24-hour particle pollution.<\/p>\n

For Vivian Adams and her nine-, six- and four-year-old children in Middletown, news of the blast furnace reline comes as a big disappointment because she is hoping to buy the home she now rents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is everything we need or wanted,\u201d she says from outside her home, where, on a recent Friday evening, she waits for her children to get off their school bus.<\/p>\n

The company sends crews out to residents\u2019 properties to pressure wash the soot and chemical dust off their houses. On one occasion, Adams says, the workers broke a door: \u201cThey do the worst job in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says that if she could speak to Vance, who grew up four miles away, she would ask him to pursue the cleaner, hydrogen-powered system proposed by the previous administration.<\/p>\n

She says: \u201cIf this is on the cars, imagine what\u2019s going into our lungs?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was just a few months after moving from Louisville to Middletown, Ohio, four years ago that Vivian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-568972","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}