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Maryland man sentenced to probation for Champion environmental problem
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Ed Knieriem Jr. of Maryland, charged in March 2009 with improperly storing some 10,000 tons of a hazardous steel-waste product at his former factory in Champion, has been sentenced to two years’ probation and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine.
Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, who has presided over the felony case since Knieriem’s indictment nearly five years ago, said after the sentencing Tuesday the important thing is that the waste will be cleaned up.
In court Tuesday, Knieriem, 66, who has missed numerous hearings over the years because of his health, told Judge Logan that only about 2,000 of the original 10,000 tons of swarf remains.
“The intention of the court was to have the property cleaned up, and the result of the case involves the cleanup of the property,” Judge Logan said.
But Deputy Harold Wix, the environmental officer with the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office, said Tuesday that roughly 1,400 tons of the swarf has been removed since October, and there are probably 6,000 tons still there.
About 80 percent of the brick at the site has been crushed in preparation of removal, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working with Knieriem to get drums of hazardous materials removed, Wix said.
The property, known as Diversified Resources, is a former brick manufacturing facility at the end of Refractories Drive, which is at the end of Folsom Drive, across Mahoning Avenue from Kent State University at Trumbull.
Knieriem pleaded guilty to six counts of felony open burning and dumping in March 2012 for exposing the waste product called swarf to the elements by removing buildings covering the material, creating a groundwater-contamination issue.
Knieriem, who also goes by the name Ed Kane, has told the court he didn’t have the swarf trucked to the site, but it had value at one time and now does not.
In court Tuesday, he said he was “guilty of aiding and abetting” the people who stockpiled the swarf but he “didn’t have criminal intent.”
A proposed consent agreement written by the U.S. EPA involving the 80-acre site says the swarf was “processed” at the site from 1993 to 1999 while Knieriem was leasing the site to a company doing business as Diversified Resources.
Several fires burned at the site during that time, with oil and petroleum discharges noted by the Trumbull County Emergency Management Agency.
Swarf is a byproduct of metal-working and milling operations by companies such as BB-pellet maker Crossman and heavy-equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, but it can ignite on contact with air or water and produce flammable hydrogen gas, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
The agreement, if signed, will require Von Vittersan Lecopla USA LLC, which is Knieriem’s company, to pay the U.S. EPA $127,624 for the cost of past EPA work at the site and to complete the cleanup.
Wix said he’s “hopeful” the cleanup will continue until all of the material is gone because he would not want to live near that site.
“If I was a resident over there, I’d be yelling and screaming every day,” he said.