Friday, March 16, 2012
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Edgar C. Knieriem Jr., 64, of Cockeysville, Md., pleaded guilty to six counts of open dumping and burning for stockpiling 8,000 to 10,000 tons of steel residue at a former brick factory he owns in Champion Township.
It has been nearly 21/2 years since Knieriem was indicted on 12 counts of open dumping and burning, a felony. Knieriem was set to go to trial Monday, but the trial was avoided by Knieriem’s plea.
He could be sentenced to up to four years in prison on each count, said Chuck Morrow, an assistant Trumbull County prosecutor.
Normally it takes about five weeks for sentencing to occur, but it might be longer in this case, Morrow said, because Knieriem’s sentence will be affected by how well he completes the cleanup.
Knieriem claims to have removed more than half of the material so far, Morrow said, adding that he doesn’t know whether that is true.
Capt. Harold Firster, the environmental officer with the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office who has worked on the case, could not be reached to comment.
“If he gets the site cleaned up quickly, it might speed up the sentencing,” Morrow said, adding that he is not making any recommendation on the sentence Knieriem should receive.
The former factory is called Diversified Resources and is on Refractories Drive, at the end of Folsom Drive, across Mahoning Avenue from Kent State Trumbull Campus and across the state Route 5 bypass from the former Copperweld steel mill.
The Trumbull County Health Department first filed a notice of violation against the company in May 2008 for failing to remove the material, called swarf.
Officials said the problem became apparent after Knieriem began dismantling parts of the building to sell for scrap.
The factory walls and roof formerly protected the material from the weather and kept it from leaching into the groundwater.
Swarf is a powdery byproduct of certain manufacturing operations. Swarf can ignite on contact with air or water and produce flammable hydrogen gas, health officials said.