3 local companies reach settlement with OEPA

Staff report

youngstown

Local companies have agreed to pay the state Environmental Protection Agency more than $90,000 to resolve past waste and pollution violations.

Three companies reached a settlement with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray this week, agreeing to pay more than $75,000 in penalties for a decade of solid-waste and air-pollution violations at the former Youngstown Iron & Metal recycling facility at 100 Division Street Extension.

Between 2000 and 2010, the industrial-recycling facility racked up numerous violations related to its scrap-metal processing and auto-shredding operations.

Violations included open dumping, eight incidents of open burning in a restricted area and failure to report the fires to environmental regulators, according to the Ohio EPA. The agency also cited the facility for failing to put shredded material in enclosed containers, enclose storage piles and keep storage piles and equipment on concrete pads.

The violations were documented by Ohio EPA and the Mahoning-Trumbull Air Pollution Control Agency, Ohio EPA’s contractual representative for air-pollution issues in those counties.

The three companies — Youngstown Iron & Metal Inc., WWW Land Inc. and Metalico Youngstown Inc. — are named in a lawsuit filed by Cordray’s office in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Youngstown Iron & Metal operated the facility until 2009, when it was acquired by Metalico Youngstown. WWW Land, the former property owner, sold to Metalico earlier this year.

Youngstown Iron & Metal and WWW Land were responsible for the bulk of the restitution, paying a combined $75,355 penalty.

The funds will go to support state and local air-pollution control, the Ohio Environmental Education Fund, the Environmental Remediation Fund and the Clean Diesel School Bus Fund. The two companies also paid $5,300 to the attorney general’s office for enforcement fees.

Metalico Youngstown paid $750 to the school-bus fund and $250 to the Ohio secretary of state for operating nearly a month without a license. The consent order gives Metalico 90 days to submit an air-permit application for the facility with the Ohio EPA.

The state EPA also will get $20,000 from Ellwood Engineered Castings Co., of Hubbard. The penalty settlement will resolve air- pollution violations at the company’s gray-iron foundry on Hubbard- Masury Road.

In February 2009, Ellwood informed state regulators the foundry was not complying with the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants. For nearly two years, the foundry’s fugitive emissions exceeded the permitted limit.

Testing in December 2009 confirmed fugitive emissions were in compliance with the NESHAP emission limit.