STACKED UP The Cleveland Casting Plant is Ford's worst polluter in America.

On the evening of May 26, 2005, those who keep tabs on the toxins spewed from the stacks at Ford Motor Co.'s Cleveland Casting Plant waited at the Brook Park Library, prepared for anything. Angry activists linking arms with the ailing elderly? Bitter emphysemics wielding placards in tribute to fallen loved ones?

But when they began their required public hearing to discuss the company's plans to install a new $80 million cast iron furnace to build engine blocks, no activists or area residents were there to listen. So plant manager Doug Rowe came forward to exalt the new, "state-of-the-art" mold-making system to people who already knew all about it. Utilizing the "best available in technology," Rowe said, the system would "result in a reduction in particulate emissions, elimination of certain exhaust fumes and community noise." Specifically, emissions of particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and lead would decrease, and nitrogen oxides would increase. Efficiency? You know it.

Then he passed the mic to Ron Tomcho, the skilled trades chairman at UAW Local 1250, who couldn't say enough about the investment in secured jobs, even though many of those 2,000 workers often choose to wear respirators for fear of dying prematurely from disease.

"We've had 52 years of environmental waste going up through that atmosphere," Tomcho said. "This system will be smokeless. The city of Brook Park is going to benefit tremendously from this. There will be no noise, no smoke and our environment will finally be clean. That is a first for a foundry."

Brook Park Mayor Mark Elliott echoed those sentiments and the meeting was over. That's when Lori Ashyk came in about 10 minutes late. Almost pleased to finally have an audience, they started from the top and told her all about the new plan.

Ashyk — a grants coordinator for the Bellaire-Puritas Community Development Corp. and a member of the Cleveland Division of Air Quality's community council — says her CDC hasn't heard many complaints from residents about the smell coming out of the plant, a metallic tang that's been reported to the city on a regular basis for decades by residents in every city potentially downwind.

"If people don't smell something, they don't know it's a problem," she says. "And the people around here, they apparently aren't smelling anything. But on the flip side, you might have an odor that's a nuisance, but it might not be toxic, and there might be something in the air that may be harmful, but you don't know it. It's a very difficult thing."

And that's how life has unfolded for those around the plant, by far the very worst polluter Ford owns in America. In its "Toxic 100," the University of Massachusetts' Political Economy Research Institute reported that Ford Motor Co. was the U.S.'s seventh-worst air-polluting corporation. (And that doesn't count what all the vehicles spit out.) And the company's last American foundry, Cleveland Casting Plant, is responsible for 61 percent of Ford plants' toxic emissions nationwide. In second place, Louisville's truck plant contributes just 9.68 percent.

Suck on that, Cleveland.

"That's a rather significant result," says Professor James Boyce, who directed the university's efforts using U.S. EPA data reported by Ford, which the EPA then weighed to factor in toxicity level and population affected. The Plain Dealer didn't report the plant's distinction when the Toxic 100 was released in May. But in December 2005, it did publish a story about how U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich and union leaders were worried about losing the casting plant's nearly 2,000 jobs to foreign competition.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Greater Cleveland was considered by some to be the carmaker capital. One-fifth of the area's manufacturing jobs were in the auto industry. Though that number slowly shrunk as technology and transportation improved, the market was still thriving after World War II when Ford plunked down two engine plants and an iron foundry right next to the fairly new Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

Due east from the plant is where 55-year-old Don Grubbs' family moved when he was 5, a working-class neighborhood fed by the area industry. The smell from Ford was a regular part of his childhood inhalations. A red sheen often covered everything. Many of his friends' fathers worked at the plant. Their kids and grandkids went on to do the same.

"There's foundry sand used to make the molds under these flowerbeds," Grubbs says, waving a finger along the side of the house, where he returned in January to care for, then bury his father. Foundry sand contains the liquid form of many of the toxic gases monitored by the government. For decades the plant was just giving it away. Most of the park-n-ride lots near the airport sit atop old sand landfills.

He rubs a section of his sedan in the driveway. "And stuff used to fall that made rust bubbles form on your car. You could really smell it then, too. And you could see the stacks." He points down a long row of backyard garages to two large trees in the distance. "It used to be right there."

Grubbs grew up to become a scientist, a teacher, then a registered sanitarian and director of environmental health for various Ohio municipalities. The smell stood out even more when he visited home, but he's never really seen anyone complain all that much.

"These are byproducts of the way our system works," he says. "You don't see much of a call for change, do you? Ford has given so many bucks in taxes to Brook Park and the surrounding area for schools, so many jobs. Does it hurt to send those jobs to Mexico? Yeah. So really it's all about what we're willing to give up for clean air and water."

Grubbs says he is willing to give up more than others are. He called CDAQ's hotline (216.441.7442) on June 19 to complain about fugitive dust coating his neighborhood. A CDAQ investigator told him the new mold-making system was being installed so Ford could meet the new federal standards by 2007. Then the investigator noted several concerns and issued Ford a notice of violation, a slap on the wrist.

We're all responsible, Grubbs says. According to Environmental Defense, by far the worst emitter of toxins is the automobile. Behind that, coal-burning power plants, then companies like Ford. Grubbs shakes his head: "I'd be willing to donate my body when I die to do a study to see exactly what the effects are. I'd do that."

GRUBB Back home, downwind from Ford again.

Do the math: In a recent year, one in which the numbers were on par with surrounding years, the casting plant put out 67,342 pounds of known carcinogens, according to the Ohio EPA, about one-fifth of all such toxins released in Cuyahoga County. It released 65,000 pounds of toxins known to affect development (about one-fourth of the county's load), too, and 21,000 pounds of known reproductive toxicants (almost all of the county's).

With a fine associated with notice of violations in 2004 of $40,000 (not including the engine plants' violations totaling $97,266), that's about 25 cents per pound of deadly toxin.

CDAQ's air quality commissioner, Richard Nemeth, acknowledges that, by sheer volume, Ford is one of Cleveland's big smoking guns.

"It is a significant producer of pollution and it's probably due to the nature of the operation," Nemeth says, "but hopefully these improvements will improve air quality."

The city has come a long way, environmentalists say, in responding to residents' complaints and cracking down on violators. It's organized a citizens council, established a hotline, worked out a joint response method with Ford to investigate suspect emissions. Still, Nemeth hasn't noticed a groundswell of agitation from residents.

He sent out 1,500 surveys; he got 275 back. Of those, 151 people didn't smell anything. (Thirty-five people said Ford was stinky, and 13 people suggested the airport might be to blame.) In the last decade, every year has brought a new handful of complaints from the cities surrounding the plant, mostly about the smell.

Last year, the owner of Touch of Gold Nite Club on Brook Park Road, just across I-71 from the plant, complained that his newly installed awning had already been severely eroded due to black ash from the plant. Ford and CDAQ came out to visit.

"Nothing's ever Ford's fault," the owner says starkly. "We're standing in the parking lot and it smelled so bad, and they're like, "I don't smell it.' The lady who came from the OEPA said, "I smell it.'" CDAQ's report summed up the exchange the same way. Ford also said the discoloration could have come from the club's proximity to the highway. The awning remains unreplaced.

"In this area, we're obviously willing to sell our soul for a little bit of money, and this is what you end up with," the owner says.

Ford "paid us a significant penalty from violations recently, but as long as they remain responsive corporate citizens and willing to take care of their problems, we'll be happy," Nemeth says. "Certainly, Ford is impactive on the economy, so it's not disappointing that they're making this investment and showing some promise for continued operations, but they do have a responsibility to meet environmental requirements."

When asked whether those requirements adequately protect public health, he says that he just enforces the laws created by the politicians elected by the people.

Chris Trepal, executive director of the area's Earth Day Coalition, says she can't help but pay attention. Though she lives near Lake Erie in Cleveland's Shoreway neighborhood, she smells Ford in the breeze quite often. She says she knows it's coming from Ford from the wind direction and because she knows exactly what Ford smells like when she's standing right outside the gates.

"I live 5.5 miles from it and it stinks at my house," she says flatly.

In her Ohio City office she maintains a folder filled with Ford pollution facts. She believes the city is doing better at making sure companies like Ford stay in compliance, and she's comforted that Ford is making improvements. "If you ask people, job creation would be at the top of the list for what they want to see happen in this area; on the other hand, if you don't look out for the health of the community, you're not going to be able to attract anyone to invest."

Last week, Tim Levandusky, president of UAW Local 1250, said the middle class is continuing to shrink with the growing prevalence of foreign outsourcing.

"There's heavy pollution in this area, no doubt, particulate as well as other emissions, but this is going to help," he says, referring to the new system. "And it means that they're investing in the future of the casting plant here. It's a win-win."

Ford feels the same way. Spokeswoman Anne Marie Gattari said all employees who could talk about the plant's pollution problem have been on vacation for the past week, so she e-mailed an informal statement reiterating that particulate matter and greenhouse gases would be greatly reduced well beyond the new standards: "Ford is committed to sustainable manufacturing. We look to integrate environmentally sustainable technologies as it is feasible to do so."

Or when the government finally, reluctantly, says enough is enough.