OEPA officias recall Lupo dumping case at lecture tonight

YOUNGSTOWN

The day after a Jan. 31, 2013 call to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources about some suspicious activity at a waste storage site on Salt Springs Road, Kurt Kollar and Bart Ray were at the site putting together the pieces of a case that would lead to Ben Lupo’s federal indictment and subsequent conviction for violating the Clean Water Act.

Lupo, of Springfield Township, is now is serving a 28-month prison sentence at a medical facility in Massachusetts.

At a Youngstown State University lecture Wednesday, Kollar and Ray, both with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, reflected on the case in which they helped prove that Lupo illegally discharged oil field waste into a Mahoning River tributary 31 times between Nov. 1, 2012 and Jan. 31, 2013.

Kollar, of the OEPA emergency response program, recalled when he realized the impact of the discharges.

“As I’m walking, all I’m seeing is oil. I’m seeing oil, oil and more oil,” he said.

The cleanup took about more than a month and was “very, very laborsome,” Kollar said.

“While he [Kollar] was doing that, we had teamed up with our criminal investigation task force and had begun our criminal investigation,” said Ray, an OEPA criminal investigator.

Read more about the lecture and the case in Thursday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.