Thursday, April 30, 2015
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
At least two state agencies executed a search warrant Tuesday at two Kleese Development Associates locations in Trumbull County in relation to an investigation by a Northeast Ohio coalition of government agencies.
The two agencies are the Ohio Attorney General’s Office Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cleveland apparently also was involved.
Heidi Griesmer, deputy director of communication for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, said the two locations were in Vienna and Warren.
She said she didn’t know what the location was in Warren, but Kleese has an injection-well facility on Sodom Hutchings Road. Its offices are on West Market Street in Warren, and it has an injection-well facility on U.S. Route 422 in Warren Township.
Griesmer said the search warrant was executed by the Ohio EPA along with other agencies that are part of the Northeast Ohio Environmental Crimes Task Force.
The task force is composed of agencies including the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Ohio Attorney General’s Office and its BCI division, Ohio EPA, FBI, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
A spokesman from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office confirmed that the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which is part of the AG’s office, was one of the agencies involved and referred questions to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cleveland, which declined to comment.
The agencies gathered information using the search warrant Tuesday and did not return to those locations Wednesday, Griesmer said. She did not know what court issued the search warrant or what type of information they sought.
Matt Kleese, field operations manager for Kleese Development, also known as KDA, did not return a request for comment Wednesday.
The search warrant raises the possibility of criminal charges being filed for the first time since a resident of Sodom Hutchings Road reported seeing dead wildlife and an oily sheen on his pond near the Vienna brine-injection site March 31.
The Ohio EPA determined that more than 2,000 gallons of “light waste oil” leaked from the Kleese site, but the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which is in charge of the investigation of the Kleese property, has not said how or why the leak occurred.
Trumbull County officials also said April 17 that Matt Kleese admitted earlier that week to connecting county water from the Kleese farmhouse near the injection wells to his home a short distance north on Sodom Hutchings Road and his sister’s house next door. The county does not have a waterline running in front of the two homes.
On Wednesday, Scott Verner, assistant county sanitary engineer, told county commissioners that county employees watched as the waterline to the two lines was made inoperable.
He said the county has determined that a Kleese family home across the street from Matt Kleese’s home did not get any of the county water, as alleged by a neighbor.
Last weekend, an ODNR inspector discovered that the injection pressure at the KDA injection site in Warren Township was too high and ordered the facility to shut down. It reopened after installing equipment that prevents the pressure from getting too high again.