For 13 years, Donna Ballinger has been dealing with blasting noises and layers of dust from coal and heavy metals on her vehicles and house, situated a few hundred yards from the Cleveland-Cliffs-owned Middletown Works steel mill in south-west Ohio. Replacing a coal-powered furnace would have eliminated 1m tons of greenhouse gases from the local environment every year, according to Cleveland-Cliffs. Vance’s grandfather, Jim, worked at Middletown Works, which makes steel for automobiles, appliances and other industries, and is considered by the vice-president as keeping his family financially afloat when he was a child. A big part of that, of course, is pollution,” says Scotty Robertson, a pastor who lives several miles from Middletown Works. While no cuts to jobs at Middletown Works have yet been announced, it faces some of the same infrastructural issues as those being idled elsewhere.