43
County officials say Kleese family ran ‘improper’ waterlines to their properties
By Ed Runyan
VIENNA
A Vienna Township trustee says the news that members of the Kleese family that runs the Kleese Development brine-injection facility ran a waterline to two or three of their homes nearby raises additional questions about the company’s trustworthiness.
“Now that we know this with the water, what other issues are they skirting?” said Trustee Heidi Brown.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said the company was the source of a 2,000-gallon oil spill discovered two weeks ago. But state officials have not yet said why the spill occurred.
Matt Kleese, field-operations manager for Kleese Development, told a county water-department official that he ran a waterline to his house and the house of another family member, said Scott Verner, assistant sanitary engineer.
The Vindicator obtained a copy of a letter Atty. Jim Brutz sent to an attorney for Kleese Development on Friday saying someone within the company or family violated the rules of the county sanitary engineering department by running a waterline to two homes on Sodom-Hutchings Road a short distance north of the injection facility in an area not served by county water.
People there use private wells, some of which were tested in recent weeks to determine whether the Kleese spill contaminated their water. The tests indicated their water was OK.
Brutz, an assistant county prosecutor who represents the sanitary engineer’s office, wrote the Kleese family has “21 days in which to disconnect these improper tie-ins.”
Verner said a farmhouse at Warren-Sharon and Sodom-Hutchings roads has a proper county water connection and it has a proper extension to an area of the injection facility where company equipment is cleaned.
But a neighbor told Commissioner Frank Fuda at an April 6 meeting at Mathews High School that Kleese family members also have county water at some of their homes along Sodom-Hutchings.
County officials were checking into it when Matt Kleese admitted he had extended the waterlines to the homes, which violates the county’s rules and regulations, Verner said.
The family extended the line from the injection facility to the tree line and then in the direction of the homes, Verner said, adding that he doesn’t know how long ago it was done or what size line was used. The county has not been able to conduct an inspection and investigation of the waterline.
The water that was being used at the homes was not stolen, Verner said, because a meter at the farm house kept track of the usage.
“If they did it truly because of concern for their well water, I have serious concerns about it,” Brown said. “That would be a very serious concern for everybody out there.”
Matt Kleese did not return a call seeking comment, but his attorney, Robert Burkey, said there is no connection between the oil spill and the waterlines because Matt Kleese and his sister got the water more than five years ago, before the company began its brine-injection business.
Burkey said he asked Verner to send him the county’s water rules and regulations, and he plans to study them to determine whether Kleese family members violated them.