This news story originally provided by Times-The Reporter

October 9, 2005

Critics say Ohio EPA response less than adequate

By PAUL E. KOSTYU, Copley Columbus Bureau chief

In June, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency ordered the collection of $46,280 in fines for three violations of water runoff rules dating to September 2004.

The violator: The Ohio Department of Transportation at a construction site near Columbus.

“The EPA’s rules, laws, requirements are not worth a hill of beans without strong enforcement,” said state Sen. Kirk Schuring, R-Jackson Township.

The lack of oversight by the Ohio EPA, said Marilyn Wall, of the Ohio Chapter of the Sierra Club, “has been its history for some time.”

Examples critics cite of EPA problems include:

• In July, radioactive waste was dumped at Countywide Recycling and Disposal landfill in Stark County. Local and state officials were notified only after the citizens watchdog group, Club 3000, found a sign marking the material while inspecting the dump.
• American Landfill in Sandy Township, which is not allowed to accept hazardous material, took in wastewater sludge from a Cleveland electroplating plant. The sludge contained nickel, which the U.S. EPA considers hazardous. A spokesman for the landfill said in August that so much time had passed since the sludge was dumped that it is impossible to find and remove it.
• The Ohio EPA trusted the air and water tests by DuPont for C8 contamination even as the federal EPA accused the company of withholding evidence of health risks. Scientists with the U.S. EPA have said C8 – used to make Teflon – should be considered a likely cancer risk for humans.

Ohio EPA officials said the C8 released into the air by a DuPont plant in Circleville, south of Columbus, posed no health risk. Within the past year, DuPont settled class-action lawsuits by residents of West Virginia and Ohio for $343 million because as many as 80,000 people may have drank C8-contaminated water. The company also is expected to reach a financial settlement in the millions of dollars with the federal EPA.

• Since 1979, Inland Products, a Columbus company that recycles grease, cooking oils and animal carcasses, has thumbed its nose at efforts by the Ohio EPA to force it to repair its facility and reduce odors. In June, state inspectors found spilled fuel and maggots among other problems, some of which were reported in a 2002 inspection. No state action resulted. The company was ordered to submit a cleanup plan.
• In Belmont County, a 3,500-foot stretch of Captina Creek became a dead zone for aquatic life after 30,000 gallons of coal slurry spilled from a 3-mile pipeline built three years earlier without the permission or knowledge of the Ohio EPA and Ohio Department of Natural Resources, as required by law. The slurry was collected, the pipeline was fixed and is operating again, still with no Ohio EPA permit.

Ohio EPA spokesman James Leach said other companies could be “doing something they shouldn’t or not following the terms of their permits or not having a permit in the first place,” but it would be difficult for EPA to catch them unless there’s an accident.

“That’s the simple reality of it,” he said. “We’re not in the business to put someone out of business.”