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OEPA reps reflect on Ben Lupo case
YOUNGSTOWN
The day after a Jan. 31, 2013, call to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources about 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 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. Even today, Kollar said, the site is not “pristine,” but is much better than when he found it.
“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. He used Kollar’s on-site information to get the truth out of one of Lupo’s employees who dumped the waste.
Two employees of Lupo’s Hardrock Excavating LLC — Mark Goff of Newton Falls and Michael P. Guesman of Cortland — got three years’ probation for illegal dumping.
The case stands out for Ray and Kollar, who testified at Lupo’s plea hearing.
“That doesn’t happen a whole lot in environmental criminal investigations,” Ray said of the federal arrest warrant for Lupo.
One question audience members raised is whether taxpayers are footing the bill for the cleanup. Kollar said no; Lupo’s company got the $3.1 million cleanup bill. Kollar did not know whether it had been paid.
Lupo also was fined $25,000 as part of his sentence.
Kollar and Ray said they were pleased with the case’s outcome. Ray said he felt it was fair that the two employees didn’t get prison time since they were doing what Lupo told them to do.
They also feel that Lupo’s significant sentence is just.
“There’s a part of me that feels bad putting an elderly man with health problems in prison, but he earned his way there,” Ray said.