Saturday, December 30, 2006
The company has broken no environmental laws, its president said.
IRONTON, Ohio (AP) -- A judge has given the owner of a Kentucky-based biofuel company until May 30 to clean up its industrial site along U.S. 52 in southeast Ohio.
Biomass Energy president Mark Harris, of Nicholasville, Ky., bought the 80-acre site from South Point Ethanol in 1999 with the intention of building an electricity generating plant, according to court documents.
There had been an ethanol plant on the site, which included a number of abandoned buildings, a concrete bunker containing coal waste and other industrial debris.
Over the years, there had been numerous complaints that the site, visible from the highway between Ironton and Huntington, W.Va., was an eyesore and could develop into a source of drinking-water pollution.
Lawrence County Common Pleas Judge Frank McCown set a cleanup schedule Wednesday in a hearing with Harris and representatives from the Environmental Enforcement Section of Attorney General Jim Petro's office.
The agreement gave Harris 21 days to secure a bond to fund the removal of coal and coke waste, and gave him until May 30 to complete the removal.
"I want it to be sparkling clean like your granny's kitchen," the judge said. "If there is anything up there fines will be levied to the maximum level."
Company president's response
Harris said the company has broken no environmental laws.
"The material in question actually is a low-grade coal, and we have it in a concrete building that is not exposed to the elements," he said.
Harris said that moving the coal was expensive and the company was not able to get it removed in time to meet the original EPA deadline.
"We have agreed to move it, and we will post bond in the next few weeks and then start the removal process," he said.
Judge McCown ordered that no scrap materials be removed from buildings until the money for the project is approved. The company also must turn over its financial records to the state within two weeks and repair structural deficiencies to the concrete bunker where waste is stored.
Judge McCown said there had been reports of asbestos buried on the site, and questioned why the Ohio EPA had not taken water and soil samples.
Clint Shuff, an EPA inspector, said he and investigators from the attorney general's office found no evidence of asbestos burial.
Petro's office filed a contempt-of-court lawsuit last month alleging that Harris failed to comply with a court-ordered cleanup.
Previous actions
Biomass was sued by the attorney general's office in 2004 and forced to pay 26,000 for improper storage and slow removal of more than 10,000 tons of tobacco at the site. At that time, the company agreed to remove all the coal and coke products within a year and a half.
When it acquired the site, Biomass had plans for a 150 million renovation of the former ethanol plant that would have allowed it to operate a wood-fired plant that could generate enough electricity to supply 150,000 to 200,000 households.