TRUMBULL COUNTY Landfill lawsuit adds Warren

The lawsuit contends the city was negligent in letting noxious odors accumulate.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- The list of defendants in a class-action lawsuit regarding the Warren Recycling landfill has grown to include the city.
The parties filed a motion Monday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court to amend the suit and add the city to the list of defendants in the lawsuit that was filed last April and assigned to Judge John Stuard.
The initial list of defendants named Warren Hills, the company that managed the landfill until earlier this year, Warren Recycling Inc.; Waste Transfer Systems, the property owner, all of Martin Luther King Avenue; and T & amp;G Enterprises of Mahoning Avenue, the company that owned the property until January 2003; and Anthony DiCenso Jr. of Sarasota, Fla., and Gilbert L. Rieger of Mahoning Avenue, who the lawsuit says were partners in T & amp;G and maintain ownership interest in Warren Recycling.
The lawsuit asks the court to order the landfill to stop emitting pollutants onto their property and to award unspecified damages.
Plaintiff's comments
Debbie Roth, one of the 13 plaintiffs in the suit and leader of the citizens group Our Lives Count, said the city allowed contaminants from the facility to go into the city sewer system.
"The city just continued to let them go on, even though it was a danger to us," she said. "They've had total disregard for all of us."
The pumping of leachate into the city sewer system only stopped when the companies were ordered to by state and federal authorities, Roth said.
The suit is set for a status conference later this month.
Neither Mayor Michael J. O'Brien nor Law Director Greg Hicks could be reached to comment.
"By failing to reasonably repair and/or maintain the sewer system and/or pump houses, [the city] has intentionally caused an accumulation of noxious odors, including but not limited to hydrogen sulfide," the lawsuit reads.
It also contends that the city was negligent in repairing and maintaining its sewer system which allowed the accumulation of noxious odors.
For years, residents around the Martin Luther King landfill have complained of a rotten-egg hydrogen sulfide odor emanating from the facility, contending that the odor makes them sick.
Agreement reached
In July 2003, the companies at the Ohio Attorney General's office reached a consent agreement to resolve problems at the facility. But earlier this year, the attorney general's office filed a motion for contempt of court against the companies for not completing the required elements of the agreements by the deadlines specified.
The class-action suit seeks damages to the residents for their purchase of equipment to remove the emissions and pollutants from the homes and property, for illnesses caused by those pollutants and for mental anguish.
It also asks the judge to issue an order requiring the companies to correct the recycling operation so the residents' and their property are "no longer physically invaded by toxic pollutants and air contaminants."