Vivian Adams’ 6-year-old daughter’s asthma problems worsened just months after she moved from Louisville to Middletown, Ohio, four years ago.
“My daughter was born premature, so she already had lung problems,[but]it got worse. She started feeling sick, coughing and couldn’t breathe. She has to take asthma medication every day and also has an emergency inhaler,” she says.
All the while, pollution from the Cleveland-Cliffs Steel Mill, which burns coal a few hundred yards behind her house, remained ever-present.
This is the same factory where James Vance, grandfather of U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, worked for many years. Vance, who was born and raised in Middletown, has repeatedly called clean energy projects a “scam.” Part of his campaign as an Ohio senator was funded by fossil fuel companies.
But for Adams, given his family’s proximity to the steel mills, there’s nothing better than having to go out and deal with it right away.
“We’re sitting in chairs and there’s a lot of black stuff on the chairs and cars. It’s soot. It’s on the toys, so we can’t leave it outside,” Adams said.
Recent events mean that nothing may change for her and hundreds of other Middletown residents living in the shadow of a large coke-burning steel mill.
Cleveland-Cliffs plans to renovate the blast furnace at its Middletown facility in a hundreds of millions of dollars that will keep the facility burning fossil fuels for at least another 15 to 18 years, according to new permit documents posted on the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s website.
Local residents are appalled.
“It’s terrible,” Adams said. “Some days it smells really bad.”
Last summer, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lorenco Goncalves announced to investors that he envisioned upgrading the plant to “beautiful coal, beautiful coke,” in the words of Donald Trump. Blast Furnace No. 3, first installed in the 1950s, uses hundreds of thousands of tons of coke each year to produce approximately 3 million tons of crude steel per year.
The move follows the Trump-Vance administration ending $500 million in subsidies for facilities to replace coke-burning infrastructure with hydrogen-fueled reactors, which by some accounts would have made the Middletown facility the steel mill with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions in the world.
Instead, residents could be trapped in an environment contaminated with dirty chemicals for decades more. Despite the Biden administration’s efforts to clean up the steel industry, Gonsalves told Politico last year, “I believe what President Trump is trying to do is for the betterment of the country.”
An email sent to Cleveland-Cliffs asking whether Department of Energy funds previously earmarked for the proposed hydrogen fuel infrastructure would be reallocated to pay for the reline was not responded to. An email sent to the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., with similar questions went unanswered.
“Cleveland Cliffs already produces significant amounts of hazardous waste, and we have a responsibility to determine whether the waste generated by this operation is hazardous or non-hazardous and manage it accordingly,” said Anthony Shenault of the Ohio Department of Environmental Protection.
Chennault was unable to estimate how much waste the blast furnace reline would generate, how the waste would be classified, or specifically where it would be disposed of.
“Disposal options are selected by the facility according to state and federal requirements,” Chenault says.
Out of more than 650 emitters in Ohio, the Middletown plant ranks among the top 10 emitters of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and other pollutants, according to a 2024 report from Industrious Lab, a nonprofit that advocates for the decarbonization of heavy industry across the United States.
“Based on our estimates of the health impacts of Middletown Steel and its coke supplier, SunCoke Energy, we estimate that, assuming pollution and population levels remain constant, there will be 1,476 premature deaths, 132,300 missed school days, and many other health problems over the 18 years following Middletown Steel’s restructuring,” says Ariana Christe of Industrious Lab.
The location ranks 11th in the country for carbon monoxide emissions, according to data from the EPA’s National Emissions Inventory Database collected in 2020.
Next door to the Middletown plant is the SunCoke Energy facility, which has the capacity to burn up to 550,000 tons of coal per year to make coke, contributing to the region’s high pollution levels.
“Together, these two facilities account for more than half of the total health impacts in Ohio from steel and coke plant contamination and contribute to an estimated $1.3 billion to $2.3 billion in annual health care costs in the state,” Christe said.
Despite the support President Trump’s tariffs gave U.S. steelmakers, the industry grew just 3% last year, according to figures released last month.
Cleveland-Cliffs shut down its iron ore and taconite mines in Minnesota last year, eliminating 600 jobs, and announced further layoffs in January. In February, the company announced that its consolidated sales in 2025 would decrease by $600 million. Gonçalves blamed the drop in sales on issues with car production and “new adversities” in the Canadian market.
Steel imports decreased by 12.6% last year, mainly due to tariffs.
Analysts argue that apart from steel magnates like Mr. Gonsalves, few people have benefited from the tariff system. Industries such as the automobile industry are undergoing large-scale layoffs as consumer demand declines due to rising steel costs.
Cleveland-Cliffs, North America’s largest producer of flat-rolled steel, employs about 25,000 people in Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ontario, but now, thanks to the Trump administration, many people in neighboring regions face many more years of dealing with harmful air pollution.
The company announced last month that its Burns Harbor Works facility in Indiana also plans to upgrade its blast furnace equipment next year. The plant is located on the south shore of Lake Michigan, next to Indiana’s only national park and close to several towns. The American Lung Association ranks Porter County, where the Burns Harbor plant is located, an “F” for high ozone days and 24-hour particulate pollution.
For Middletown resident Vivian Adams and her children, ages 9, 6, and 4, the news of the blast furnace renovation was a big disappointment. She wanted to buy the house she was currently renting.
“It’s everything we needed and wanted,” she said from outside her home on a recent Friday night as she waited for her children to get off the school bus.
The company sends workers to residents’ properties to pressure wash soot and chemical dust from their homes. At one point, Adams said, workers broke down the door. “They have the worst job in the world.”
She said if she could talk to Vance, who grew up four miles away, she would ask him to pursue the cleaner hydrogen fuel system proposed by the previous administration.
she says: “Imagine what would go into our lungs if this was in our car.”
