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MVSD chair says didn’t know MVSD lawyer also represents injection well company
By Ed Runyan
MINERAL RIDGE
The chairman of the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District Board of Directors said he was unaware the district’s attorney also represents a company whose injection well was closed in 2014 because of small earthquakes.
His representation of both bodies could raise questions as to the attorney’s having a conflict of interest because the MVSD is studying whether earthquakes caused cracks at the district’s Meander Dam and buildings.
Chairman Matt Blair, who also is an attorney, said Atty. Thomas J. Wilson is “extremely ethical, and if he had an ethical conflict, he would notify the board and take the necessary action.”
Wilson is one of two attorneys representing American Water Management Services in two legal matters, both of them still pending.
He worked on behalf of AWMS on an appeal starting in August 2015 that resulted in a Dec. 23 decision by a Franklin County Common Pleas Court judge in Columbus ordering ODNR to allow AWMS to reopen its injection well on state Route 169 in Weathersfield Township just north of Niles. A Columbus attorney assisted Wilson.
In August, Wilson and Atty. Matt Vansuch filed legal action against the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in the Warren-based 11th District Court of Appeals. The action seeks compensation for ODNR’s shutting down the injection well.
The shutdown occurred Sept. 4, 2014, after small earthquakes occurred at the AWMS site in July and August 2014, the biggest of which was a 2.1 event Aug. 31.
In November, MVSD hired Gannett Fleming Engineers and Architects of Columbus for $9,922 to study cracks in the the MVSD’s buildings and its dam to determine what is causing them.
Blair said last week that earthquakes are one possibility Gannett Fleming is studying as a possible factor in the cracks.
“Our dam wasn’t built for earthquakes,” Blair said. “When we build out there, if the ground is becoming more unstable, we have to build in a different way like California so we don’t have cracking.”
Gannett Fleming also was hired last year at a cost of $396,000 to conduct soil borings to look at the bedrock below the dam to determine the best ways to reconstruct the nearly 100-year-old dam for future generations.
Gannett Fleming has estimated reconstructing the dam will cost about $28 million, but Blair said he’s not in a position yet to say what changes will need to be made to make the dam stronger.
Richard Dove, director of the Ohio Board of Professional Conduct for lawyers and judges, pointed a Vindicator reporter to the conflict-of-interest section of the board’s rules.
It says a lawyer may have a conflict of interest if his representation of the client “will be directly adverse to another current client” or there is “substantial risk that the lawyer’s ability to consider, recommend or carry out an appropriate course of action for that client will be materially limited by the lawyer’s responsibilities to another client.”
Blair and Wilson say this circumstance does not put Wilson in conflict.
“There is always the possibility that a conflict of interest will develop,” Wilson said. “I’m not aware of one at this time.”
Wilson said his understanding of the results of the $9,922 study is that the cracking “is not related to seismic activity” and is more related to “construction used” in the 1920s and 1930s.
As for Wilson’s working for an injection-well company, Blair said Wilson “has nothing to do with the engineering studies,” and Blair doesn’t think the study is “looking into seismicity at the injection well,” just earthquakes in general.
Blair said the only kind of conflict of interest that would require Wilson to withdraw his representation would be if the MVSD and the injection-well company became involved in litigation against each other.
He would have to recuse himself from representing either party in that event, Blair said.