DEAR EDITOR:

An opinion letter published Dec. 28 about Youngstown’s mayor receiving an environmental award contains many inaccuracies with regard to SOBE Energy Solutions and its proposed pyrolysis project.

In 2019, SOBE Energy Solutions purchased the defunct Youngstown Thermal business to provide downtown Youngstown buildings with steam heating and cooling using only natural gas, as approved by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO).

At the Public Utilities Committee of the Youngstown City Council on July 21, 2022, SOBE’s CEO David Ferro announced plans to expand into a for-profit industrial pyrolysis operation. He said he would solve the plastics recycling problem in the U.S. by using a Thermolyzer to melt recycled plastics and tires to produce more plastic, synthetic gas, carbon black, and some electricity to mine cryptocurrency.

Ferro said that the plastics and tires would be trucked in and chopped up in Lowellville and shipped by rail to Youngstown. Since he is from Dublin, Ohio, Ferro did not know that there is no rail line going to 205 North Ave. In February 2023 he changed his profit-making plan and announced that computer waste and plastics would be “superheated” in a Lowellville pyrolysis plant to make synthetic gas for sale. Only the chopped up tires would be “Thermolyzed” in Youngstown.

SOBE’s property is next to YSU student housing, an urban youth education and sports center, the county jail, and black-owned businesses. It is currently zoned Mixed Use-Community since our city has revitalized the downtown area next to it. SOBE Thermal Energy was “grandfathered in” to the new zoning, but is not permitted to expand to industrial use.

SOBE is just south of a residential neighborhood already suffering bad health outcomes due to decades of steel mill pollution. Youngstown is designated an Environmental Justice community of concern by the US EPA.

Vallourec, (home office France) the steel mill just below this neighborhood, manufactures fracking pipe at the old Youngstown Sheet and Tube Brier Hill works. Unfortunately, Ohio EPA has given a Title V air pollution permit allowing 900 tons of particulate matter to be released per year.

Residents of Youngstown researched the proposed experimental Thermolyzer that SOBE Thermal wanted to employ to melt down tires right next to this populated area, and found it was not a new, non-polluting technology as the CEO claimed, but was pyrolysis. To make matters worse, tires would be shipped in from all over the state to be pyrolyzed. This would compound the toxic pollution emitted from pyrolysis, adding diesel truck traffic fumes.

Residents of Youngstown formed SOBE Concerned Citizens (SCC) and met with our city council and mayor many times. SCC educated the public with public town hall meetings, speeches at city council and neighborhood groups, using yard signs, a billboard and a website: www.stop-sobe.com.

Please visit the website and scroll down to “Sustainable Youngstown Comments” for a complete report on the air emissions detailing the amounts of dioxins and toxic chemicals that would be released. Click on “Buckeye Environmental Comments” for another important air emissions scientist’s report. Please read the valuable information on the site and spread the word about the dangers of pyrolysis of plastics and tires.

We applaud our city council members and our mayor’s decision to protect Youngstown residents’ health and safety. We thank Mayor Tito Brown for signing the Moratorium Ordinance on gasification and pyrolysis in our city into law. We are happy he accepted the Energy Justice Champion award for our city.

LYNN ANDERSON

SOBE Concerned Citizens

Youngstown