A new study, published this April in the American Journal of Political Science, found that air polluting facilities across the United States have been systematically sited at state downwind borders, where the particles, soot, and heavy metals they pump out will be carried to neighboring states. The finding came after researchers at multiple universities combined data on the locations of nearly 40,000 industrial facilities across the US with data on prevailing wind patterns. Facilities that produce airborne waste tend to aggregate near downwind borders, the authors found, while those producing solid or liquid waste do not.Anything with a smokestack likely sits near a downwind border; the most toxic facilities sit the closest.
If you were to drive from the southeastern United States to Clairton, you could easily pass some of the country's largest power plants—in North Carolina, West Virginia, or, with a quick detour, Ohio. Many of them sit on their states' downwind borders, their smudge-tipped smokestacks dotting the horizon. How did we get here, where many of our polluting industries are aimed like cannons at our neighbors?One easy answer is that state regulatory agencies are more likely to award air pollution permits to new facilities, and more likely to allow them to be built, if those facilities mainly float their pollution out of state. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is answerable to the voters of Ohio, after all, and not to the residents of Clairton, Pennsylvania.As her generation has aged, many of Hurt's friends have developed cancer. Although she can't be sure about the cause, bad air is a legitimate suspect.
Monogan and other researchers suggest that air pollution facilities locate on state downwind borders because it's easier to go there than to go anywhere else. "There's pretty good evidence of this," says David Konisky, an associate professor at Indiana University and one of Monogan's co-authors. "Whatever a firm is trying to site, they want to find locations where they will get less political blowback."In a recent three-and-a-half-year period, the Clairton coke plant committed 6,700 pollution-limit violations—roughly five a day.
The EPA was, of course, created to tackle national environmental problems, like this one, that individual states cannot address alone. "People recognize this is an area where there is a proper role for the federal government," Konisky says. Both Obama's and George W. Bush's EPA developed rules to limit exported pollution. The Obama-era Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, first finalized in 2011, initially identified more than 1,000 power plants across 28 eastern states that needed to reduce emissions in order to improve air quality in downwind states. "They've tried to sincerely solve the problem," Konisky says.Naturally, the rule was challenged by power companies and upwind states who felt the EPA had overstepped its authority. In 2014 the Supreme Court settled the issue by upholding the rule, and implementation began in 2015. As a consequence, according to EPA data, toxic cross-state pollutant emissions have already dropped by the millions of tons. The EPA expects full implementation of the rule to result in up to $280 billion in annual environmental and health benefits, including tens of thousands of avoided heart attacks, emergency room visits, and premature deaths.Still, concerns linger about whether the problem will be truly solved. For starters, some states, including those that sued the EPA in 2016, think their polluting neighbors have unfairly been left out of the rule. Additionally, the current rule only targets power plants, like the Belews Station, leaving manufacturing facilities, like coke works, uncovered.Of greater concern is the uncertainty posed by the new administration. EPA representatives attest that implementation of existing programs, like the cross-state rule, is "continuing." But so too are Trump's plans to reduce the agency to "tidbits." (His currently proposed budget would cut the agency staff by 20 percent). More telling still, the man now heading the agency tasked with enforcing the cross-state rule, Scott Pruitt, once sued to block it.In the living room of her home, with her back to the Clairton plant, Cheryl Hurt discusses her reasons to be hopeful. She wears a "Change we can believe in" t-shirt and watches her grandkids with obvious pleasure. "I don't feel powerless about anything," she says. "A good thing about a small community is you have more power. You can organize your neighbors and your friends. Say, 'let's try to stop these things.'"Despite the health risk it poses to her family, Hurt doesn't resent the nearby coke plant or its owner, US Steel. "I was born and raised here," she says. "My grandfather worked in a steel mill. My father worked in a steel mill. And then I ended up in a steel mill. So three generations of us all in a steel mill. We are used to this. We live with all of it."Hurt's grandkids play in an open room where large cutouts of Cookie Monster and Big Bird wave from the walls. "US Steel is not the enemy," she says. "I understand more than most that where we live, there's more than just US Steel that impacts our community. The control that has not been placed upon all of these industries—that's where the problem begins and ends." Read This Next: It's Not Looking Good for People Who Live in Big CitiesThe rule would result in $280 billion in annual environmental and health benefits, including tens of thousands of avoided heart attacks, emergency room visits, and premature deaths.