Monday, February 07, 2000
OEPA response time questioned
Work site cleanup upsets residents
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
With final cleanup within reach at Hilton Davis' historic chemical plant in Pleasant Ridge, neighbors never anticipated new problems with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
“They will not meet with us,” longtime neighborhood activist Travis Kubale said last week.
However, the problem with Ohio EPA is not unique, according to activists who say the agency is too cozy with business.
In a recent submission to the U.S. EPA, those critics cataloged dozens of instances of what they called tardy, weak, or failing regulation of Hilton Davis and other firms.
Pleasant Ridge Community Council and the related Citizens Concerned About Hilton Davis have been pressing for cleanup of the Langdon Farm Road site for two decades. They feared that pollutants from waste lagoons were poisoning the air and soil.
During those years, the chemical plant has changed hands repeatedly but one former owner, Kodak, retained cleanup responsibility.
Waste-filled lagoons were cleaned up, leaving 109 spots of contaminated soil elsewhere on the grounds.
Kodak sent its remedial investigation report on those problems to Ohio EPA in December 1998.
Citizens Concerned received its copy a few weeks later. “It was 17 volumes and a yard wide,” Chairwoman Marjorie Evert said.
Assured of receiving necessary time to respond, Mrs. Evert was stunned when Mike Joseph, the Ohio EPA site coordinator, came to their March 1999 meeting and gave them one month.
“We got angry,” she said.
The Ohio EPA agreed to a June 8 deadline and with one consultant and thousands of hours of volunteer work, Citizens Concerned submitted its highly technical 60-page evaluation on time. Mrs. Evert is still waiting for the agency's response.
A senior Ohio EPA official last week said that the agency's response to the remedial investigation and citizen comments could be ready in a couple of weeks.
A little history: In 1986, neighbors won a state court cleanup order for the site. However, demands on Ohio EPA were minimal, Mrs. Evert said. “We can't force them to do anything more than monitor the project. They are required to do that. They follow their own schedule.”
Even so, neighbors, owners and regulators “enjoyed a remarkable and extraordinary rapport” by the mid-1990s and cleanup was moving nicely, Mrs. Evert said.
Mrs. Evert suspects the agency's silence reflects Ohio EPA's inability to complete its own review of the site remediation investigation report during the past 13 months.
If it is done, Ohio EPA's delays and silence are inexplicable, she said. “We're not sure what's going on.”
Or as community attorney D. Da vid Altman said, “The agency went away and has yet to come back.”
True, Ohio EPA acknowledged, but there has been nothing to meet over until the agency's response was completed, reviewed and ready for release to the public.
James Orto, manager overseeing the cleanup, and Kodak always are ready to meet with Citizens Concerned, Mr. Kubale said.
On the other hand, Mr. Kubale said, Ohio EPA “has gotten increasingly difficult to work with.”
Mr. Orto shared that frustration, “but probably not to the degree that the citizens do. It always takes longer than you want it to. ... There isn't a set time for Ohio EPA to respond back to us.”
Mr. Orto shared that frustration but would not fault Ohio EPA's representative at the Hilton Davis cleanup, Mr. Joseph.
Mr. Joseph last week denied trying to rush Concerned Citizens. “They call it a deadline. I call it a goal. ... I was shocked that they were upset. I thought 31/2 months was enough.”
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