Salvage yard that caught fire had no salvage license and had been ordered to close two years ago

By Ed Runyan | June 16, 2013 at 12:05a.m.

VERNON

By late last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had placed 2 feet of clay over the parts of Countrywide Salvage that had caught fire, and there was no longer any indication of fire or smoke coming from the site.

Tricia Edwards, EPA on-scene coordinator, said air-quality monitoring showed that nothing harming air quality was leaving the site. Further air-quality testing results will be available next week, she said.

Firefighters and environmental officials were called to the salvage yard, 6542 Orangeville-Kinsman Road, on June 1 for burning tires and found other things in the salvage yard also on fire. The yard is just north of state Route 88 near the Pennsylvania border.

The facility was a dump site dating back to the 1970s and 1980s, officials said.

Edwards said it doesn’t appear any water-impacts occurred involving a stream near the salvage yard.

Frank Migliozzi, director of environmental health for the Trumbull County Board of Health, said the health department and EPA suspected the yard of committing illegal landfilling operations about two years ago while the owners were gutting manufactured homes there and landfilling some of materials.

That’s when the board of health ordered the salvage yard, which had an auto-salvage license, to stop accepting any additional material and to clean up improper materials, Migliozzi said.

For a while, the owners followed the health department’s orders, but the cleanup stalled, so early this year, the health department asked the owners for a cleanup plan.

At that point, the facility no longer had a license from the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office to operate as a salvage yard, and the yard was ordered to comply with the health department before it would be allowed to reopen.

Within the past couple of months, for the first time in a couple of years, inspectors found new material at the site — a large pile of brush and drums of unknown material, Migliozzi said.

The health department is planning to cite the facility for the brush and drums, Migiozzi added.