Cleveland’s air quality pollution standards haven’t been updated since the 1970s.
Now, a coalition of community groups addressing environmental issues, health, housing and workers’ rights are calling on Cleveland City Council to take up stalled legislation that would tighten rules for polluters.
The city’s health department proposed the rules last March as a way to improve air quality and reduce asthma rates in the city, but it got pushback from companies and agencies. The proposed air quality code would require facilities located in neighborhoods with already-dirty air and economic and health disadvantages to undertake a more extensive permitting process when adding new pollution sources.
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Cleveland is considering stricter air pollution regulations. Cleveland-Cliffs, others are pushing back
“The life of Clevelanders is literally in the hands of City Council members that are willing to support health equity through policy change,” said Yvonka Hall, a member of the Cleveland Air Quality Coalition, at a press conference about the issue Monday. Hall is executive director of the Northeast Ohio Community Resilience Center, which focuses on addressing disparities in health, housing and environmental outcomes among African American communities.
Hall said there has been no progress on moving the legislation forward since it was introduced. It was referred to council’s Health, Human Services and the Arts Committee last spring, but no hearing on the legislation has been held.
Hall said she hasn’t heard anything from council members about why it hasn’t moved forward. But she pointed out that the legislation garnered pushback last year from several entities that emit pollution, including Cleveland-Cliffs and the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District. They worried it would be burdensome and expensive.
Council President Blaine Griffin said that he had been waiting on the city’s health department to provide him with an updated piece of legislation, after meeting with steel-producer Cleveland-Cliffs, among other stakeholders. He told Signal Cleveland in an interview that he recently learned that the city spoke with Cliffs but was not able to agree on how to move forward. Now, Griffin said, the legislation is back in City Council’s court.
“We’re going to start looking at it again and seeing what we need to do,” Griffin said. “So basically it just got kicked back to us.”
Dr. David Margolius, the city’s director of public health, said he wants to make it clear that the proposed rules are not meant to reduce employment or give companies “busy work” by adding more application requirements.
“But we do want to continue the great momentum that has been happening in Cleveland and the United States, where the air has been getting cleaner and cleaner,” he said.
Council Member Kevin Conwell, who chairs the health committee, said he hopes to hold a hearing for the legislation in late March or early April.
Cleveland Air Quality Coalition wants cumulative pollution impact considered
The air quality coalition is also asking the City Council to change several pieces of the proposed legislation it received from the health department.
The coalition wants companies or agencies that request new or modified air pollution permits to calculate and consider emissions from nearby existing sources – not just the pollution impact of the change at their facility.
“A true cumulative impacts ordinance has to take everything in that area together, right?” said Miranda Leppla, the director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Case Western Reserve University, which is a member of the air quality coalition. “So what’s already there emitting, what’s new and going to be brought there.”
The coalition also wants the City Council to add language into the legislation that will trigger the Cleveland Department of Air Quality to deny requests for air emission permits in certain areas that are already heavily burdened with pollution. Currently, the proposed code says that the city’s air quality division “may” deny a permit if it’s determined that pollution from a new facility would disproportionately impact overburdened communities.
But some companies and agencies that emit pollutants have asked the city to walk back some of the proposed rules. In an email to Griffin last April, a representative from Cleveland-Cliffs asked that the city exempt “insignificant air emission sources” from the new code, according to an email obtained via public records request. This matches Ohio law, which currently doesn’t require sources that only pollute a little bit – typically less than 10 pounds a day – to get an air permit.
Cleveland-Cliffs asked the city to instead focus the stricter parts of the proposed permitting process on pollution sources that result in a “significant increase in emissions,” an amount set by the state.
Other entities told the city that the rules would be too expensive. The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District is a government entity that cleans and treats the community’s sewage and stormwater, which involves air pollution when it burns sludge. The agency wrote to the city’s air quality department last year that the cost of the new rules would be borne by residents who pay fees to the district.
Support for stricter air pollution regulations
The push to update Cleveland’s air quality code garnered support from more than environmental and health organizations.
Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing, a group focused on lead safety, said that stronger air quality laws could help them, too. Two representatives for the organization, Spencer Wells and Andre White, said they often wish for better air quality monitoring options when dealing with industrial fires or explosions that could contain lead.
White said that the smoke can pollute the air with lead, which can fall down onto the ground below it.
Other supporters of the air quality legislation Monday included the Northeast Ohio Workers Center, Cleveland Owns (a nonprofit dedicated to starting worker- and community-owned co-ops), the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus, Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and Cleveland VOTES.
