Cleveland officials outline major overhaul to 1977 air-pollution code, propose fees and neighborhood protections

Cleveland City Council health committee members on Tuesday heard a presentation from City of Cleveland public‑health staff on a proposed update to the city’s air pollution code, last substantively revised in 1977. The presentation described new requirements for cumulative‑impact assessments, stronger permit information for projects in the city’s most impacted neighborhoods, an expansion of indoor‑air services and a proposed increase in annual operation fees that would funnel revenue into a city fund for emission‑reduction activities.

The proposed code changes are meant to give the city tools that complement federal and state regulations, officials said. “This code has not been updated since 1977,” Christina Yoca, chief of air quality outreach for the Division of Air Quality, told the committee. “It has been 50 years since there’s been a major revision to the local air pollution code.”

City staff said the revisions respond to continuing health disparities across neighborhoods. Yoca noted pediatric asthma rates in Cleveland of “23 to 25 percent,” compared with a cited national average of about 8 percent, and said the update aims to target the neighborhoods with the worst outcomes. The proposal would require a health‑impact report to be produced every five years and, if the legislation passes, the first report within one year of adoption.

Key proposals and how staff described them

Cumulative impacts and neighborhood ranking: The code would add a definition of “cumulative impacts” and use a ranking map developed under the Clean and CLE project to identify neighborhoods with the highest combined…