WARREN Landfill talk will exclude the city

An attorney general's office spokeswoman said that office's issue is with the company.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- The Ohio Attorney General's Office wants a meeting later this week regarding Warren Recycling Inc. to exclude a city health district representative.
The meeting Thursday in Twinsburg was set to discuss what the attorney general's office and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency say are noncompliance issues at the company's Martin Luther King Avenue construction and demolition debris landfill. The meeting is expected to include officials from both state agencies and the company.
The city health district also planned to send a representative, but Robert Pinti, deputy city health commissioner, said that Michael E. Buckley, assistant attorney general with the environmental enforcement section, told him last week not to.
"Our involvement is with our client, the EPA, which has referred it to us for enforcement action," said Stephanie Beougher, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office.
She said OEPA would likely continue to be in contact with the local agencies involved.
"Our issue at hand is with Warren Recycling," Beougher said.
Pinti said the city will comply.
License revocation
Last month, OEPA sent a letter to the health district saying the district should revoke WRI's current landfill operating license because of ongoing noncompliance issues and deny renewal of the 2003 license unless a satisfactory consent agreement is reached by Dec. 31.
Pinti said he was concerned about putting the city in a position to get sued and wanted OEPA to clarify whether it was ordering the health district to revoke the company's license.
After city officials questioned the letter, OEPA sent another letter saying that it agreed it doesn't make sense to revoke the 2002 license with only two months remaining in the year.
OEPA said it had no objection if the board decided to forgo that action but maintained the position that the health board should propose denial of the 2003 license application if WRI hasn't reached an agreement by the end of the year.
Some of the noncompliance issues the OEPA is concerned about stem from 1998. The company was convicted last year of a misdemeanor count of criminal damaging, accused of accepting wood in 1998 that came from a cabinet manufacturer, not from a construction or demolition site.
If wood is coming from an industrial process, it is considered solid waste.
The company's landfill permit is for construction and demolition debris, but it doesn't have a solid-waste permit to dump manufacturer's waste.
The conviction resulted in a $99,000 fine. OEPA officials have said there are additional noncompliance issues, but they declined to elaborate.
Pinti said he'll wait to hear from state officials about how they want the city to proceed.
"We want them to order it to remain open or order it closed," he said.
Pinti said state officials have told him they would inform the city of the meeting's outcome.
"They can't expect us to do something when we don't have the information," he said. "It's in their court. We've tried to be as cooperative as we could possibly be, and we'll continue to follow their directives."
dick@vindy.com