TRUMBULL COUNTY OEPA investigates legality involving WRI's license, operations

The license is a company asset and goes along with the stock purchase.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- An Ohio Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman says the agency is looking into the legality of Warren Recycling's owners operating the landfill when the license was issued to a different company.
At a city health board meeting Wednesday, Anthony DiCenso III of Warren Recycling Inc. told board members that his company had purchased the stock, assets and liabilities of Warren Hills LLC.
Although WRI owns the Martin Luther King Avenue landfill that has been the source of controversy the last few years over a rotten-egg hydrogen sulfide odor, Warren Hills has been leasing and operating the facility for more than a year.
DiCenso said this week that Warren Hills had exercised an option to terminate that lease and that WRI would resume some operations at the landfill to pay the bills.
"We're looking into the validity of the sale and how it will impact the license, consent order and other matters related to the landfill," said Heidi Griesmer, an OEPA spokeswoman.
Some health board members had questioned whether WRI could legally operate the facility since the license had been issued to a different company.
What attorney said
Cleveland Atty. Steven D. Bell, who represents WRI, said that both the Ohio Attorney General's office and OEPA were informed of everything that transpired between the two companies and no one indicated any objections.
"An entity purchased all of the stock of Warren Hills and when you purchase all of the stock of a corporation, you receive all of its assets," Bell said. "One of those assets is the license."
The landfill ceased operations last month after the OEPA ordered the facility to stop accepting waste from railcars that couldn't be identified.
The companies presented a proposal to the state to close the facility in four years and to post a bond. That proposal also included a provision that the landfill be allowed to accept 4,000 tons of waste per day so it could generate revenue. Its permit allows 1,500 tons per day.
The state rejected that proposal.
The state agencies and the companies reached a consent agreement last year stemming in part from charges that the landfill accepted solid waste in the late 1990s in violation of its permit. WRI is a construction and demolition debris landfill and cannot accept other waste material.
The agreement calls for the companies to pump leachate from the landfill site and conduct air, groundwater and gas monitoring among its requirements.
A hearing in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court is set for November after the attorney general's office asked that the companies be found in contempt of court for not complying with all of the requirements by the deadlines outlined.