Vivian Adams’ six-year-old daughter’s asthma worsened just months after moving from Louisville to Middletown, Ohio, four years ago.
“My daughter was born prematurely, so she already had lung problems,” she says, “(but) it’s gotten worse. She keeps getting sick and coughing and can’t breathe. She has to take medicine every day for her asthma, plus she has a rescue inhaler.”
Meanwhile, pollution from the coal-burning Cleveland-Cliffs Steel plant several hundred yards behind her home has been ever-present.
This is the same plant where James Vance, grandfather of US Vice President J.D. Vance, worked for years. Vance, born and raised in Middletown, has repeatedly called clean energy projects a “scam.” As senator from Ohio, his election campaigns were partially controlled by fossil fuel companies.
But for Adams, given his family’s proximity to the steel plant, nothing beats what he encounters when he steps outside.
Adams says: “We sit in our chairs and on them, on our vehicle, there’s a bunch of black stuff, it’s soot. It’s on their toys, so you can’t leave them outside.”
Recent events mean none of this is likely to change for him or the hundreds of other Middletown residents who live in the shadow of the massive, coke-burning steel plant.
New permitting documents on the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s website show that Cleveland-Cliffs plans to retrofit the blast furnace at its Middletown facility — a several hundred million dollar move that will herald the end of fossil-fuel burning at the facility for at least the next 15 to 18 years.
Local residents are shocked.
“It’s horrible,” says Adams. “Some days the smell is absolutely terrible.”
Last summer, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves used Donald Trump’s terminology to announce to investors that he envisioned a “beautiful coal, beautiful coke” upgrade at the plant. The No. 3 blast furnace, first installed in the 1950s, uses hundreds of thousands of tons of coke every year to produce about 3 million tons of crude steel each year.
The move comes after the Trump-Vance administration ended a $500m grant for the facility to replace its coke-burning infrastructure with a hydrogen-powered furnace, which, by some accounts, would have made the Middletown facility the lowest greenhouse gas-emitting steel plant in the world.
Instead, residents may find themselves stuck with dirty, chemical-polluted environmental exposures for decades. Despite the Biden administration’s efforts to clean up the steel industry, Goncalves told Politico last year: “I believe what Trump is trying to do is for the good of the country.”
An email sent to Cleveland-Cliffs asking whether Energy Department money already earmarked for the proposed hydrogen-powered infrastructure was to be reallocated to pay the cost of the reline was not responded to. An email to the Department of Energy in Washington DC asking similar questions did not elicit a response.
Anthony Chenault of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency says, “Cleveland-Cliffs is already a large-volume generator of hazardous waste and is responsible for determining whether any waste from this work is hazardous or non-hazardous and managing it accordingly.”
Chennault was not able to predict how much waste material the blast furnace reline would generate, how the waste material would be classified or specifically where it would be disposed.
“Disposal options are chosen by the facility, consistent with state and federal requirements,” Chenault says.
A 2024 report from Industrious Labs, a nonprofit advocating for decarbonizing heavy industry across the U.S., found that the 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.
Ariana Christe of Industrious Labs says, “Based on the estimated health impacts of the Middletown steel mill and its coke supplier, SunCoke Energy, and assuming that pollution and population levels remain stable, we estimate that there will be 1,476 premature deaths, 132,300 lost school days, and many other health-related illnesses over the 18 years following the Middletown Works 810 rework.”
The site is the 11th-worst emitter of carbon monoxide in the country, according to data from the EPA’s National Emissions Inventory database collected in 2020.
Next to the Middletown Works is the SunCoke Energy facility, which has the capacity to burn up to 550,000 tons of coal per year to make coke, which contributes to the high pollutant levels in the area.
Christe says, “Together, these two facilities are responsible for more than half of Ohio’s total health impacts from steel and coke plant pollution, contributing an estimated $1.3 billion to $2.3 billion in annual health costs to the state.”
Despite the help Trump’s tariff regime has given US steelmakers, the industry grew just 3% last year, according to data released last month.
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 more layoffs. In February, it announced a consolidated revenue deficit of $600 million for 2025. Gonçalves attributed the decline to automotive production issues and “new adverse dynamics” in the Canadian market, among other reasons.
Steel imports declined 12.6% last year due to tariffs.
Analysts argue that some steel giants like Goncalves are seeing benefits from the tariff arrangement. Industries such as automotive have seen massive layoffs due to falling consumer demand due to the high cost of steel.
The largest producer of flat-roll steel in North America, Cleveland-Cliffs employs approximately 25,000 people in Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ontario, and now, with the blessing of the Trump administration, many people in nearby communities will have to deal with adverse air pollution for years.
Last month, the company announced that its Burns Harbor Works facility in Indiana is also set to retrofit its blast furnaces next year. The plant is located next to Indiana’s only national park and adjacent to several cities on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. The American Lung Association has rated Porter County, home of Burns Harbor Works, an “F” on high ozone days and 24-hour particle pollution.
For Vivian Adams and her children, ages nine, six and four, in Middletown, news of the blast furnace realignment comes as a major disappointment as she was hoping to buy the house she now rents.
“This is everything we need or want,” she says from outside her home, where, on a recent Friday evening, she is waiting for her children to get off the school bus.
The company sends crews to residents’ properties to pressure wash soot and chemical dust from their homes. On one occasion, Adams says, workers broke down a door: “They do the worst work in the world.”
She says if she could talk to Vance, who grew up four miles away, she would ask him to pursue the clean, hydrogen-powered system proposed by the previous administration.
She says: “If it’s on cars, imagine what’s going into our lungs?”
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