Refuse company pleads guilty; agrees to pay fine

The company misidentified the origin of waste from Trumbull County, which lowered the fees it paid.

STAFF REPORT

WARREN — Wolford’s Refuse and Recycling of McDonald, which agreed to pay waste management districts in Trumbull and Mahoning counties $517,000 last year to settle a lawsuit for misidentifying the source of waste it hauled to Mahoning landfills, has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor offense and agreed to pay a $5,000 fine.

Paul Wolford, company president, appeared Tuesday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court before Judge Andrew Logan to represent the company. Wolford agreed to pay the money by Sept. 17.

Charles Morrow, an assistant county prosecutor, said the criminal charge also was for misidentifying the origin of waste the company had collected, the same allegation contained in the civil suit.

The lawsuit was filed by the Geauga-Trumbull Solid Waste Management District in 2007. The Mahoning County recycling division later joined the suit.

Late last year, Wolford’s agreed to pay the Geauga-Trumbull district $387,619, and the Mahoning district $129,381.

Wolford’s residential trash-collection business was bought out in June 2007 by Waste Management of Ohio Inc. of Cleveland. Wolford’s is still in business at 175 Ohio Ave., McDonald, renting roll-off garbage containers.

Court documents said Wolford’s inaccurately declared for six years that the waste it was dumping in Mahoning County landfills originated in Mahoning County, when the waste actually came from Trumbull County.

By doing this, Wolford’s saved $5 per ton in dumping fees, paying $1.50 too little to Mahoning County and none of the $3.50 it owed to Geauga-Trumbull.