YOUNGSTOWN — A grassroots organization and others are hoping a one-year moratorium city council had placed late last year on SOBE Energy Solutions to stop the company from converting old rubber tire chips into synthetic gas will be extended another year.

“We urge everyone present and in Youngstown to support city council and the moratorium,” Kendrick Sandifer, an intern with the Kramer Environmental Law Clinic at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said.

Sandifer spoke to about 60 members of the SOBE Concerned Citizens group and others during a 90-minute informational town hall meeting Thursday evening at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Youngstown, 1105 Elm St., on the North Side.

Sandifer outlined what he and others feel needs to be done to prevent SOBE from burning the bits of shredded tires for gasification and pyrolysis to be sold as synthetic gas.

Pyrolysis is the heating of biomass and other organic materials in the absence of oxygen. In effect, it’s the process of thermal decomposition of materials at elevated temperatures, usually in an inert environment, without oxygen.

On Dec. 20, 2023, Youngstown City Council unanimously voted to enact the one-year moratorium on SOBE’s ability to burn such tires, which, many contend, will cause added pollution and carcinogens that will adversely affect many people’s health and well-being. Mayor Jamael Tito Brown signed the ordinance six days later.

When the seven council members adopted an ordinance in December to enact the stoppage, they argued that the company would operate in a part of the city, in the shadow of downtown, that had been zoned as a mixed-use community district, not for energy or industrial production.

Councilwoman Anita Davis, D-6th Ward, said she and her colleagues may vote to draft legislation at city council’s Wednesday meeting to extend the stoppage for another year.

The moratorium expires Dec. 26.

Miranda Leppla, an attorney with the Environmental Law Clinic, which is representing SOBE Concerned Citizens, said the clinic testified before city council late last year regarding the zoning situation “we believe prevents this from being built without a variance.”

If SOBE were allowed to proceed, her clients and other residents would soon feel the impact of their health and environment “in a negative manner,” Leppla added.

Lynn Anderson of the SOBE Concerned Citizens group provided an update from the past year in which she mentioned several local accidents and unexplained occurrences, the results of which were human error, to make the larger point that it can’t be guaranteed that, if permitted to proceed, something similar wouldn’t occur with SOBE.

Specifically, she cited the May 28 natural gas explosion at the Realty Tower building in downtown Youngstown that killed Akil Drake, a 27-year-old Chase Bank employee; the mysterious June 14 natural gas odor that led to the evacuation of many downtown buildings, and had reached the Youngstown State University campus; and an explosion July 11 near the Vallourec plant that resulted when molten slag came into contact with water.

To this day, no definitive cause has been attributed to the foul gas odor, Anderson noted.

Ellen Buerk, another intern with the Kramer Environmental Law Clinic, noted that SOBE recently hired a Columbus law firm to file an appeal before the Environmental Review Appeals Commission. On Feb. 14, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency issued an install-and-operate permit that SOBE had applied for in September 2022.

Even with such a permit — and even if it wins the appeal — SOBE will still have to overcome challenges related to the zoning laws and the moratorium, Buerk told attendees.

“(City council) basically said whatever determination is made will not supersede our local zoning laws. So, even the Ohio EPA admitted that we still have control over what happens from a land-use perspective within city limits,” city council President Thomas Hetrick said in February, referring to a letter council received from the EPA that stated as much.

OTHER CONCERNS

WITH ENERGY PLANT

Others who spoke at Thursday’s session included Rachel Meyer, who’s with an organization called Moms Clean Air Force in Beaver County, Pa., and Beth Vild of Akron-based People over Polymers.

“We’re fighting for clean air for our children and our climate, and their future,” Meyer said.

Burning rubber tires releases climate-warming carbon dioxide and carcinogenic materials such as dioxins, which can adversely affect especially children with asthma, along with heavy metals, hazardous air pollutants and volatile organic compounds, she noted.

In addition, SOBE has proposed converting plastic waste and used electronics into energy at 30 sites, including the Youngstown facility, according to a Jan. 3 Inside Climate News article.

Meyer, however, warned that plastic has an estimated 16,000 chemicals, many of which can affect one’s lungs. Children are particularly vulnerable because they typically are faster and more active, meaning they breathe in a greater amount of air more quickly, she explained.

Vild, who also has worked with the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, said the result of much pollution in the Akron area is attributable to “environmental racism.”

Many of the rubber and other industrial facilities were built on the city’s poorer east side, resulting in a disproportionate number of illnesses, compared with Akron’s wealthier north and west sides, she recalled.

Such health disparities correlate with the areas’ income levels, she said, adding that, contrary to popular belief, pyrolysis and related industries fail to produce the high number of jobs they promise.

“Don’t be another Akron; Youngstown, take care of yourselves,” Vild said, adding, “It’s incredibly important for everyone to get involved in this fight. I hope as a region, we can engage in these fights.”