By Christopher Johnston for Eye on Ohio.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Ohio News Connection Collaboration reporting for the Ohio Center for Investigative Journalism-Public News Service Collaboration

While running for Cleveland City Council Ward 3 seat last year, Ayat Amin spent a lot of time canvassing neighborhoods and talking to residents about environmental issues. 

“What came up time and again in our conversations that really resonated with people was air quality,” she said. “Specifically there were a lot of residents who felt they were experiencing poor air quality but didn’t know what to do about it.”

When she inquired about signs of air pollution in their neighborhood, residents told her they would have to wipe soot off of their outdoor plants or off their houses. In Ohio City, residents of Lakeview Terrace, one of the oldest public housing complexes in the U.S., complained of particles in the air from the roughly 1,000 trucks passing through, spewing exhaust and stirring up dust that landed on their cars, homes and in the air they breathed every day.

After she lost the election to incumbent Kerry McCormack, Amin convened an informal citizen action group that met regularly to research available data and discuss air pollutants such as methane and lead in the air. They talked with representatives from the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency and Cleveland’s Division of Air Quality, which was helpful and “wanted the same things we wanted.” However, the group stopped meeting after about five months.

“Our group stalled at the beginning of last summer because we were struggling to determine what we could actually do about air pollution,” she said. “There wasn’t enough data for us to prosecute, and the city was already working on getting more monitors. We didn’t have definite sources of pollution data that we could mobilize people in the neighborhood and say, ‘Hey, your air quality is poor, and here’s the proof of where the pollutants are coming from.’”

Since then Amin has continued to research the problem and looked at what other cities are doing to address air pollution. She found an innovative study from Portland, OR, using moss as an air pollution detector. Because moss plants don’t have roots, they absorb whatever substances are in the air on their surfaces, thus serving as a cheap air quality monitor. 

“The researcher and a large group of volunteers collected moss samples throughout the city on a very granular level in about a ten-block radius,” Amin explained. “They were able to create an almost block-by-block map of pollution hot spots, and having that data enabled Portland residents to go to their City Council and advocate for legislation.”

Seattle later replicated the project, enlisting mainly high school students to collect the moss samples. She is still studying the feasibility of doing a similar study in Cleveland neighborhoods. Amin, who works as a product manager at ChargeNet Stations, a renewable energy company, was recently named to a new position as co-director of Environmental Justice with the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party. If the moss study proves feasible, she said, it will be implemented as one of several environmental projects with the county organization.

“I’m very happy with what the people who work for the city [addressing air quality] are able to do with the resources they have,” Amin concluded. “But as a resident, I don’t know if it covers all of the needs.”

New Air Pollution Control Code in the works

One of the barriers to identifying specific sources of air pollution violations for Amin’s citizen group was Cleveland’s greatly outdated Air Pollution Control Code, which hasn’t been revised since the 1970s. 

According to Christina Yoka, chief of air pollution outreach for the Cleveland Department of Public Health, the department is currently working through the public engagement process that she expects to continue into spring of 2023, and a revised code will be proposed by the end of 2023.

“We want to update the code with items that will benefit the community and that the community wants to see in the air code,” Bryan Sokolowski, chief of air monitoring, Ambient Air Monitoring Section for the Department of Health.

His department, which includes permitting and enforcement divisions, relies on those city codes, along with state of Ohio Administrative and Revised codes, to enforce air quality concerns throughout Cuyahoga County.

“We cover the whole county,” Sokolowski said. “If there’s a violation of an air permit within the city and the violator does not come into compliance, then the city would pursue the enforcement process through the law department.”

Cleveland scores low air quality grades from ALA

In April, the American Lung Association released its “State of the Air” report:“Cleveland’s Air Quality Gets Worse, Residents Exposed to More Unhealthy Air Pollution.” ALA’s report ranked Cleveland as the 27^th most polluted city for ozone pollution. 

In terms of short-term spikes in particle pollution, which can be “extremely dangerous and even lethal,” according to the ALA, Cleveland’s ranking worsened to 58^th. 

The city’s metro area ranking did improve significantly for year-round particle pollution, though. The city jumped from 14^th to 42^nd worst, “taking the Cleveland metro area well off the list of dirtiest cities in the nation for this pollutant measure.”

Sokolowski said that ozone is a challenge for several reasons, though his department is only responsible for stationary sources, and most ozone pollution is generated by mobile sources. However, he believes that an imminent national standard update will improve Cleveland’s air quality in the near future. 

Approximately every five years, the EPA reviews its pollution monitoring standards to determine whether they need to be lowered or changed. Currently, the EPA is reviewing the Particulate Matter 2.5 standard, which measures very fine particulates two and a half microns or less in size, small enough to get deep into a person’s lungs. Generally, it is produced from fuel combustion, coal, natural gas, diesel or gasoline. The other type of particulate matter the city monitors is PM 10, a larger, coarser material that typically shows up as soot or dust on cars or plants.

“Some early indications are that the standard might get lowered,” Sokolowski said. “If it does, we will probably be in nonattainment for PM 2.5. in our area. So that would mean more restrictions on facilities, and the Ohio EPA would need to develop a state implementation plan on how we’re doing to be in attainment for that pollutant.” 

Sokolowski expects to hear by the end of this year or the beginning of 2023 whether or not the standard is going to change.

Cleveland’s sizable air quality monitoring system

The Clean Air Act of 1970 started mandatory air quality monitoring, and Cleveland maintains a fairly robust air monitoring operation that Sokolowski said is always searching for ways to improve. 

The George T. Craig Air Quality Monitoring Site on the corner of East 14^th St. and Orange Avenue stands just south of downtown Cleveland. The facility is one of 14 such sites throughout the city, all of them smaller than this flagship site, that combined hold 56 different pieces of equipment, The Division of Air Quality is responsible for monitoring the U.S. EPA’s criteria pollutants: lead, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and larger and smaller particulate matter as well as ozone.

As the Chief of Air Monitoring, Sokolowski oversees a crew of 12 operators and technicians – currently down one – who ensure that the equipment is up and running 24/7 to maintain vigilance of the city’s ambient air quality. In addition to monitoring, the division is also responsible for permitting and enforcement of air quality standards at facilities throughout Cuyahoga County.

“The primary purpose for monitoring ambient air is to determine if our city/region is in compliance with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards,” he said. “Without constant air monitoring we would be unable to determine if these health-based standards are being met. Then we would not know if additional restrictions are required to improve air quality.”

New monitors will increase air quality data for PM 2.5

Through the American Rescue Plan that passed Congress in March 2021, the US EPA received $20 million to invest in air monitoring throughout the country. As part of that grant, Cleveland will obtain three more continuous, real-time data particulate matter analyzers to complement its three existing monitors. 

“We’ll have an additional three PM 2.5 monitoring sites within the next year from that funding,” Sokolowski said. “Those are the gold standard of monitoring equipment, and they will give us a good real-time, hourly understanding of what the current air quality is.”

The entire state will gain roughly 30 new such monitors during the next year from the grant. In the meantime, Sokolowski’s department plans to install low-cost sensors to identify any pockets of the city where these monitors would be most effectively placed to enhance air quality monitoring.

“The more data we can get, the better we can understand the air shed not only in Cleveland, but Cuyahoga County,” Sokolowski said.

Citizens can check their monitoring any time for Cleveland and every US city at AirNow.gov.

Why ozone is an ongoing challenge

“We have had some tremendous gains in the past 50 years and the past 20 years as our air quality continues to improve,” said David Hearne, commissioner of air quality, Cleveland Department of Public Health. “However, we still have some areas like ozone where we need to continue that improvement.”

Ozone is particularly tricky, Hearne said, because it is not emitted by one source that can be regulated. Rather, it forms in the atmosphere when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) blend with sunlight and heat to generate ozone. Ozone causes a serious health concern because when it is formed, it creates an additional oxygen molecule that then prevents human blood systems from being able to absorb oxygen, causing respiratory difficulties. 

Those substances, known as ozone precursors, are emitted by mobile sources such as cars, trucks, construction equipment, trains, etc. 

Cleveland’s geographic location on a Great Lake facilitates the ozone problem. “We only have exceedances in the spring, June and early July,” Sokolowski said. “The lake is very cool in those months, so that sets up an air boundary, and all of the pollutants emitted in urban and industrial centers get blocked by that cool air over the lake. As the lake warms, pollutants can disperse better, so we don’t have exceedances.”

The EPA allows four exceedances per year, and Cleveland surpasses that number every summer. Ozone season used to be April 1^st to September 30^th, but about five years ago, the EPA expanded that season, adding a month to each end to account for the sun and high UV readings even in October in some states.

Cleveland’s has 72 parts per billion of ground-level ozone during the ozone season, the EPA requires 70 parts per billion.

Cleveland is the final remaining ozone non-attainment area in Ohio, according to John Mooney, division director for Air and Radiation Division of Region 5, U.S. EPA Chicago. “To have only one non-attainment area in a state the size of Ohio with the industrial mix is quite a remarkable accomplishment,” he said, adding that during the past 10 years, Cleveland has reduced its ozone about 10%.

However, he added, other Midwest cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee also remain in nonattainment for ozone.

According to Anthony Chenault, media coordinator, EPA, Northeast, Central and Southeast Districts, Columbus, the Ohio EPA also uses highly sophisticated air monitors to monitor for various pollutants across northeast Ohio. These federal reference method monitors produce the type of data that can be compared to the national air quality standards. 

“When looking at more long-term data, currently the highest reading ozone monitor in the area is at a monitor in Eastlake,” Chenault said. 

“It takes about three hours for ozone to be formed,” Sokolowski explains. “So by the time the air mass over Cleveland moves, and it usually moves west to east, it ends up over Lake County, and that’s why they’re seeing those high values of ozone on the Eastlake monitors.”

Air quality data tables with hourly updates are available at the Ohio EPA’s pollution control and data website. 

Ohio EPA also provides funding in the Cleveland and Akron areas for lawnmower change-out programs, Chenault said. Owners can exchange their gasoline lawnmowers for credit towards all-electric models. 

NOACA plans future solutions to improve air quality

As the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the area, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) plans transportation funding for the region. The agency’s work has a significant impact on the region’s environment, too, specific to transportation infrastructure and movement.

“We’ve been evaluating the air quality issues, and currently about a third of the greenhouse gas emissions are caused by mobile sources,” said Grace Gallucci, NOACA’s executive director. “That is the single largest source of that pollutant, so we then are able to focus on mobile emissions and look to remediate the air quality concern.”

The reverse of the Division of Air Quality, NOACA has jurisdiction over mobile emissions only, not stationary sources.

Last year, NOACA completed its long-range plan, Equity Northeast Ohio 2050 (ENEO2050) that outlines projects, programs, plans and policies from 2022 to 2050 that they developed and are now looking at implementing.

One of the key goals is to reduce usage from 94% single-occupancy vehicles to 89% by increasing reliance on multimodal transport options including public transportation, bicycles and pedestrian modes.

“We have about 1,000 items in the plan, including very specific projects related to long-range public transit and significant projects related to pedestrian and bicycle transportation such as trails and bicycle-protected trails that have been defined and programmed into the plan with funding, so they will happen,” Gallucci said.

With an eye to the future proliferation of electric-powered vehicles, plans include roughly 50 Electric Vehicle charging stations that will be located at public parks, libraries, City Hall, etc. for convenient access. A priority was placed on ensuring that “environmental justice communities” were accommodated in all transportation plans, as well.

“We want to make sure that we are offering facilities for minority and low-income families,” Gallucci said. “When we talk about air quality, we know it is an issue of equity and that the worst air quality is in the environmental justice communities who live in denser urban and industrial centers where they are exposed to more mobile emissions. So we want to make all of [the] improvements for everybody, but we also recognize that some of the largest areas of concern are environmental justice areas.”

NOACA also created a Regional Climate Action Plan to provide more detailed initiatives to help keep the city in attainment for ozone by taking more vehicles off the road, for example, and expanding the highway system throughout the region. There are also long-range plans to extend RTA’s rapid transit system from Hopkins International Airport to different parts of the region such as Elyria and Medina, but those have not been funded yet.

The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that passed in November 2021 included $100 million for transportation infrastructure improvements in Ohio. The act also included $66 billion to support long-range improvements and expansion for AMTRAK, but funds from the five-year plan have not yet been allocated to individual projects in Northeast Ohio.

Christopher Johnston wrote this article for Eye on Ohio.


get more stories like this via email

Community members in Seattle had a unique opportunity to weigh in on the policies guiding the city's climate goals.

In 2019, the City of Seattle passed the Green New Deal Resolution and Green New Deal Executive Order, with the goal of eliminating climate pollution by 2030.

To help guide that process, the initiative's oversight board supported community assemblies.

Peter Hasegawa is the organizing director at MLK Labor and co-chair of the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

He said the idea behind the community assemblies was to do deep listening with many different community members.

"To have the opportunity to present information and get feedback," said Hasegawa, "and have people think about solutions together over a longer period of time, was appealing to us because we thought we could get higher quality feedback."

MLK Labor and Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle hosted the assemblies.

The goal was to ensure that people on the front-lines had their voices heard, and were at the table as the city crafts policies going forward.

Faduma Fido is lab leader with the People's Economy Lab, which helped support the community assemblies.

She said they're piloting this type of engage at the city level because people are tired of going to listening sessions.

She said the assemblies provide a more empowering setting, with people compensated for their time and eating meals together. Fido said they want to bring democratic practices like these back.

"There's an appetite and willingness now to empower the citizens," said Fido, "empower communities to practice democracy beyond the ballot box, because often that tends to be very polarizing."

Hasegawa said they heard from a variety of people over the three sessions.

In the first, they heard about people's experiences being affected by extreme weather, such as the 2021 heat dome, and a freeze last winter that caused many people's pipes to burst.

In the second session, they heard about wins on the ground to protect people and workers from the effects of climate change.

Hasegawa said in the third, they brainstormed about what the city and local labor movement can do about climate change.

"In certain ways that ended up being the easiest session," said Hasegawa, "because there was a very high level of consensus that what workers in Seattle want is to be protected from extreme weather, they want to be protected from heat and smoke, and bursting pipes, and they want to be protected whether they work in a building or outside or in a home."




get more stories like this via email

Electric vehicles have seen a nationwide uptick, yet Wisconsin lags behind - with EVs making up only about 1% of all cars on the road.

Misconceptions about cost, maintenance and performance are top of mind for hesitant buyers. But in Wisconsin, where about 30% of the state's population is rural, accessibility is one of the biggest concerns.

Jeremiah Brockman, chapter president of the Wisconsin Electric Vehicle Association, said he thinks it's only partly because rural areas in general are slower to catch on to some trends. He said some areas still don't have enough charging stations.

"Part of the problem, too," he said, "is you have more farmland in rural areas, and if you spend the entire day out on a farm and you're driving around your many acres of land, you worry about where you're going to charge your vehicle at that point, and I think that's another hurdle."

Compared with neighboring states, Wisconsin has significantly fewer charging stations. In an effort to help bolster the state's EV infrastructure, Wisconsin passed a law earlier this year to install a network of 65 fast-charging stations statewide. The plan is to install them every 50 miles along the interstate system and major highways through next year.

The law also makes it easier for gas stations, convenience stores and other businesses to operate vehicle charging stations. However, they'd pay a new EV charging tax beginning next year.

Even though the law was Republican-authored in Wisconsin, Brockman said he believes the political divide is another factor in electric-vehicle ownership hesitation.

"Honestly, this a part of a larger national conversation where electric vehicles are kind of being politicized," he said. "I'd like to say the benefits are there. It doesn't matter who you voted for last Tuesday, the benefits are there, no matter what."

Those benefits include lower fuel and maintenance costs, lower emissions and potential tax breaks. So far, Dane County and Madison lead the way for EV adoption in Wisconsin. As part of the mayor's climate-change policy to cut the city's emissions in half by 2030, Madison has added electric buses and recently unveiled the state's first electric garbage trucks.


get more stories like this via email

By Grace Hussain for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi for Commonwealth News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

The food we eat is responsible for as much as a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Most of that comes from beef — including millions of burgers served up by fast food chains across the world. To date, fast food companies have made little progress in curbing their climate pollution, but pressure to hold these corporations accountable is beginning to come from what may seem like an unlikely group: their own shareholders. This year, fast food chains Jack in the Box and Wingstop agreed to publish their first set of measurable climate targets, led by a group called The Accountability Board.

The two-year-old nonprofit owns shares in roughly 100 publicly traded companies. Its purpose: “to hold companies accountable on issues relating to the environment, social matters and corporate governance,” says Matt Prescott. Prescott is a co-founder and one of the leaders of the organization.

How Shareholders Pressure Jack in the Box and Other Fast Food Chains

Shareholders, at least those that own a certain percentage of a company, are able to file proposals asking for action by the company that the shareholder wants to see. A growing movement of nonprofit shareholders have also used this strategy to increase corporate accountability. Kevin Chuah, PhD, an assistant professor at Northeastern University who researches stakeholder activism, explains the tactic: “They’re using the financial system infrastructure to enable them to get access to companies that they might not get access to otherwise.”

The Accountability Board focuses on the food and agriculture sector in particular, says Prescott, including industry giants like Tyson Foods and Hormel Foods. While issues like corporate governance and diversity, equity, inclusion and justice are universal across industries, food and agriculture companies are unique in their outsized impact on the environment and animal welfare, Prescott says.

Most multinational corporations have made public climate commitments, but many have failed to back them up with actionable plans for accomplishing those goals. That was the case too with Jack in the Box, Prescott tells Sentient. “They’ve got disclosures about risks posed by climate change and other environmental issues, but the company didn’t actually have measurable goals for reducing its emissions,” he says. But thanks to the newly-passed proposal, now they will.

Jack in the Box now reports scope 1 and 2 emissions — emissions the company directly emits or that are generated from the electricity or other utilities the chain uses. In the food sector however, as much as 90 percent of greenhouse gasses come from scope 3 sources, with most of those coming from meat and dairy products. Scope 3 refers to emissions that come from a company’s supply chain, which in this case, includes the very beef burgers that are a massive driver of food-related emissions.

Yet an important part of The Accountability Board’s strategy is structuring their proposals strategically to make it more likely to actually pass. The group aims to keep them general, says Prescott, in this case asking for measurable targets, but not prescribing exactly what those targets should be.

Ahead of the vote, the nonprofit’s team spent time engaging with the largest shareholders to ensure they would find the proposal appealing. When it comes to “major shareholders, like BlackRock and Vanguard Group,” says Prescott, they lean against supporting proposals “that are overly prescriptive.”

A Brief History of Shareholder Activism

Shareholder activism traces its roots back to the 1980s, when individuals or groups would acquire shares in companies in order to push for some kind of change within the corporation. At that time, shareholder activists usually sold their shares once they accomplished their goals, earning them the nickname of “corporate raiders.”

Since then, shareholder activists have managed to reform their reputation, even with corporate executives. According to Chuah, whose research focuses specifically on environmental, social and governance issues, a number of executives can point to “situations where shareholders have brought interesting information to us that we hadn’t thought about before.”

The Accountability Board doesn’t usually sell its shares, instead choosing to maintain and also grow its portfolio by acquiring stock in new companies, says Prescott. Most of the shares the organization owns were bought with an initial $11 million grant from the non-profit foundation, Open Philanthropy. Tax records indicate the group’s investments netted them $17,280 in 2022, but because The Accountability Board was formed in the latter part of that year, the figure only reflects a few months of proceeds.

For Chuah, shareholder activists are one piece of the bigger picture of change. Agitator nonprofits and religious groups are often the “innovators,” he says, the ones “who get issues onto the table and effectively bring them to the attention of the mainstream.” Next, “the institutional investors get on board.” Real progress, he says, will require both: those working within and outside of institutions.


Grace Hussain wrote this article for Sentient.

get more stories like this via email