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Gennaro, Naples get probation for illegal waste disposal
YOUNGSTOWN
Two businessmen and the company they work for pleaded guilty to charges of illegal waste disposal before Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, who put the men on four years’ probation, but didn’t jail them or put them on house arrest.
David J. Gennaro Sr., 70, of Silver Fox Run, Boardman; Frank A. Naples, 66, of Thunderbird, Drive, Poland; and Gennaro’s company, Soil Remediation Inc., entered their pleas Friday on charges brought by the Ohio Attorney General’s Environmental Enforcement Section.
The company was fined $60,000; Gennaro, $35,000; and Naples, $20,000.
The company additionally will pay $60,000 to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to cover its investigative and community service project costs.
Gennaro also must pay $10,000 toward OEPA’s costs of investigating the case.
Gennaro is listed as company president, and Naples as plant manager on the indictment.
The defendants were accused of illegal waste disposal at 6065 Arrel-Smith Road, Lowellville, in 2012 and 2013.
Between January and September 2013, prosecutors said natural-gas drilling-related waste, including brine, crude oil and natural gas, were dumped illegally there.
“The solid waste dumped and buried at SRI consisted of oil-and-gas production waste from wells located in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania,” said Robert W. Cheugh II, principal assistant Ohio Attorney General in the Environmental Enforcement Section.
“Thousands of tons of solid waste” were dumped without the authorization of the Ohio EPA or the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, he told the judge.
The dumping included “hundreds of loads of waste brine” or other waste fluids from oil and gas wells in the tri-state area without ODNR’s authorization, he added.
Eleven members of FrackFree Mahoning Valley picketed outside the county courthouse before, and appeared at, the plea and sentencing hearing.
Gennaro and Naples pleaded guilty to complicity to illegal storage of petroleum-contaminated soil and illegal disposal of drilling fluids, both misdemeanors.
The company pleaded guilty to open dumping of solid wastes, a felony, and to the two misdemeanor charges to which the men pleaded guilty.
John Shultz, the lawyer representing Gennaro and his company, said there was “no criminal intent” and that the violations were unintended and wouldn’t be repeated.
Saying his client had no prior criminal record, Lou DeFabio, lawyer for Naples, asked Judge Sweeney to impose probation on his client.
Calling probation a lenient sentence, Judy Vershum of Canfield Township, a member of the FrackFree group, said she thought the men should have been sent to prison “for a little while at least,” perhaps a year, to deter others from similar conduct.
“It sort of opens the door for companies or individuals who want to profit from dumping to come to Youngstown and do it because they’ll get probation,” she said of the sentence.
Naples and Gennaro did not address the judge at their sentencing.
“The Ohio Attorney General’s office takes illegal dumping very seriously, and we prosecute violations to the fullest extent of the law,” said Dan Tierney, an AG’s office spokesman.