COLUMBUS, Ohio – The operators of an illegal dump in East Cleveland have appealed an order by the Ohio EPA to shut down operations and clean up the mounds of construction and demolition debris.
In its appeal, Arco Recycling Inc. maintains that EPA Director Craig Butler lacks the authority to prohibit the company from continuing its work at the Noble Road facility, and that Arco wasn’t given reasonable time to carry out the order.
Arco has asked the Ohio Environmental Review Appeals Commission to revoke Butler’s order, based on a finding that he acted unreasonably and unlawfully.
A prehearing conference before the commission is scheduled for March 1.
The EPA has issued two notices of violation to Arco, and recently asked the State Attorney General’s office to file an enforcement action against the company, said EPA spokeswoman Heidi Griesmer.
“Arco has stopped taking waste, but we have not seen any evidence that waste has been removed,” Griesmer said in an interview today.
“We will continue to document Arco’s compliance and noncompliance,” she added. “Their appeal does not stay the order. They must still comply.”
Arco owner Christina Beynon could not be reached for comment, and no one answered the phone at the company’s headquarters on Noble Road. The company’s lawyer did not return a call for comment.
As part of a grass roots movement to clean up and evict the Arco dump, residents of the Noble Road neighborhood obtained air tests from Jim Riffle, an environmental engineer from Auburn Environmental. He found that the site is emitting potentially dangerous levels of a toxic gas called hydrogen sulfide at levels two to three times higher than the U.S. EPA deems acceptable.
Hydrogen sulfide is a flammable, hazardous gas with a smell like rotten eggs, Riffle said. It is a byproduct of rainwater percolating with gypsum drywall disposed at the dump, he said.
In its appeal, however, Arco said the site is not a garbage dump, but is a recycling operation that involves “storage, reuse and/or recycling in a beneficial manner of construction and demolition debris.”
Butler issued the notices of violation and shut-down orders after inspectors determined that the site was an open dump, not a recycling facility, and that rather than complying with orders to reduce the mountains of debris, the four-story piles actually have been growing, Griesmer said.
The Arco dump was supposed to contain only construction and demolition debris, with the majority coming from hundreds of abandoned nuisance homes demolished by the Cuyahoga Land Bank.
Workers at the site were supposed to separate wood, plastic, metal, concrete, brick, and appliances for sale and disposal at licensed landfills.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
