NEWTOWN, Ohio — Evans Landscaping owner Doug Evans is facing new contempt charges from Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who is asking a judge to send the high-profile Newtown businessman to jail for 30 days and pay $223,000 in penalties for allegedly not performing court-ordered clean up.
State prosecutors, the Ohio EPA and Hamilton County Public Health officials are still complaining about buried construction waste, unpermitted work and lack of cleanup at Evans facilities near Newtown.
Despite this, Evans is winning contracts for public work.
Newtown Village Council voted to hire Evans for a storm water remediation project on June 11, accepting his $261,710 bid as the lowest.
“I am proud that Evans Landscaping was recently selected by the Newtown Village Council as the most qualified and lowest bidder for the McCullough’s Run remediation/ erosion control project. Evans Landscaping has directly relevant experience, the appropriate equipment and experienced employees to complete the work,” Evans wrote in a statement. “There is no legal prohibition preventing us from being awarded the project.”
None of the six council members or Newtown Mayor Mark Kobasuk responded to requests for comment. But June 11 meeting minutes reveal their discussion before the 4-to-2 vote approving the bid.
“They are knowingly and have a history of putting construction debris in the ground and burying it and it’s breeching into the river. They’ve been caught, sure they paid their fines. But it’s a question of ethics for her and she struggles awarding such a large bid to someone with this kind of history when we have other companies that are not doing these kinds of things to our environment,” according to Councilperson Sarah Donohue’s comments. She voted against the Evans bid.
Other council members felt the near $25,000 savings with Evans’ bid, over the next lowest bid, was the deciding factor.
“The difference of $24,750 is a sizeable amount of money to the village – we could put that toward employee compensation,” according Kobasuk’s comments in the meeting minutes.
“One disadvantage for Evans in this case is that no one else’s problems have been researched … this one email we received, it sounds like this person is just hunting after Evans and doing all kinds of things. Ms. Boone said she doesn’t think it would be fair to not award the lowest bid since its of significant difference – unless we dug into the kind of infractions the other companies have had that maybe didn’t make the news,” according to the meeting minutes.
Councilperson Tracy Boone voted for the Evans bid. She referenced an email that WCPO 9 sent to the village with a public records request related to Evans on June 11, the date of the meeting.
The project is being funded by a $214,000 grant from Hamilton County and a $50,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Spokespersons from both public entities say they were not involved in Newtown’s bidding process.
“The grant was approved in April 2024 to remediate stormwater issues in Newtown. As stated in the grant agreement, Newtown is responsible for ensuring all laws and regulations are followed,” according to county spokesperson Bridget Doherty.
A jury in December 2018 found Evans and his company, Evans Landscaping, guilty of defrauding the city of Cincinnati and the state of Ohio by taking millions in demolition work that was supposed to go to minority and small business contractors.
Federal prosecutors had asked U.S. District Court Judge Michael Barrett to ban Evans Landscaping from public work for three years. But the judge declined.
So, there is no legal reason why Evans Landscaping, which was also been criminally convicted as a company, can’t win government work.
Conversely, there is also no legal reason why local government agencies must award work to a company with a fraud conviction, even if it presents the lowest bid, said attorney J. Thomas Hodges, who specializes in government contract law.
Hodges has no direct knowledge of the Evans case but agreed to speak generally about how local government contracts are awarded.
Ohio law sets a general standard that municipalities should accept the lowest and best bid, Hodges said, with each municipality able to define what “best” means for them.
“Ultimately the lowest bid is often the bid that’s chosen,” Hodges said. “It can be hard to explain to taxpayers why you would pay more for the same project.”
But elected leaders must also manage the optics of hiring a company with a criminal conviction, that also has been sued by the state’s top prosecutor.
“The optics against are obvious. Do we want to work with a company that has a history of illegalities?,” Hodges said. “Do we want to work with a company that has environmental concerns?”
The Ohio EPA did not want Evans Landscaping to work on a wetlands restoration project in Clermont County in 2022, citing factors such as “contractor integrity” and “compliance with public policy.”
“A constant theme in contracting with federal or state dollars is the concept of ‘responsibility,’” wrote Martha Spurbeck, a grants administrator for the Ohio EPA Division of Surface Water, in a Jan. 11, 2022, email to the Clermont County Water and Soil Conservation District.
She did not recommend giving the Williamsburg wetlands project to Evans Landscaping despite it being the lowest bidder. In addition to the minority contracting conviction, Spurbeck listed Evans’ past environmental complaints as reasons against giving the company the bid for the wetlands project.
Ultimately the Clermont Soil and Water Conservation District gave the project to the next lowest bidder and denied Evans the job.
“I think the Ohio EPA letter speaks for itself. Clermont Soil and Water Conservation District agreed with their assessment and felt that Evans Landscaping did not submit the lowest and best bid,” director John McManus wrote in an email to WCPO 9 in 2022.
But a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources said the agency was not involved in the Newtown project.
“Under the grant agreement, the village is required to comply with all local, state, and federal law, including competitive selection. However, decisions on selecting contractors and vendors through that competitive selection is solely the responsibility of the village,” ODNR spokesperson Karina Cheung wrote in a statement.
“ODNR is not involved in creating bids, the review process of bids, or the selection of contractors or vendors,” Cheung wrote, but noted the agency will monitor the status of the project to ensure it is completed and compliant with grant requirements.
Work has not started on the McCullough Run project, but Newtown fiscal officer Keri Everett said it is expected to be completed by Sept. 30.
Meanwhile state prosecutors and attorneys for Evans are set to be back in Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas on Aug. 13, where Visiting Judge Jonathan Hein will hear arguments about whether to find Evans in contempt of court.
“Defendants’ disobedience of the court’s order should not be excused as mere 'paperwork' or 'technical' violations; instead they should be characterized as what they are – blatant, ongoing disregard of the court’s unambiguous order,” assistant attorney general Allen Vender wrote in a July 5 court filing.
Yost sued Doug Evans in 2021 in the hopes of resolving decades of environmental violations.
Health officials accuse Evans of illegally burying waste at three sites near Newtown: a site at 8361 Broadwell Road, which prosecutors say Evans turned into a five-acre illegal landfill; at a 78-acre Mt. Carmel Road site, where Evans Gravel is located; and at 4229 Round Bottom Road, where Evans corporate headquarters are located on 90 acres that abuts the Little Miami River.
Evans signed a settlement with state prosecutors in 2022, agreeing to pay a $550,000 fine and to clean up three facilities, with penalties of up to $1,000 per day for noncompliance.
But three years later, health officials are still complaining about buried construction waste, unpermitted work, lack of cleanup and pollution seeping into the Little Miami River.
“This company is not interested in following the law,” said Thom Cmar, a senior attorney with the nonprofit Earthjustice, who is not part of the Evans case but reviewed violation notices, court filings and groundwater testing results.
“We’ve seen in some of the leachate that’s been coming off of these sites arsenic at levels that are five, 10 times what’s safe for human consumption,” Cmar said. “When you have that level of pollution going into whether its drinking water or a river that people are using, that creates an unsafe situation for everyone in the area.”
Evans, 62, is a well-known entrepreneur on the east side who built a landscaping empire from a high school job hauling mulch from a pickup truck. He now employs 250 at operations that range from sand and gravel, equipment rental, snow removal, soil and firewood, ready-mix concrete, tree services and stone works.
The part of Evans’ business that health inspectors have targeted repeatedly is the recycling of construction and demolition debris operation.
In August 2023, Yost filed a contempt motion against Evans, asking a judge to jail him for 30 days for violating a court order to clean up the sites. “He thumbed his nose at the entire process. He thumbed his nose at the community. He thumbed his nose at the court. We’re done,” Yost said in August 2023. “We're not going to be okay with him just flipping off the court and not complying with the order.”
A month later, Yost’s office withdrew the contempt charges after Evans produced proof of that he was actively cleaning up illegal pollution. Both sides were back in court last November, fighting about how to clean up the thousands of truckloads of construction waste buried at the Broadwell Road facility.
In recent months, health officials also issued violations for exposing construction waste to snow and rain, not cleaning up buried waste and building an earthwork to cover up waste without a permit.
"Evans Landscaping has voluntarily entered into a consent order with the state of Ohio that requires us to take certain action at nearby properties. We have continued to work diligently and cooperatively with all applicable government agencies to complete the required tasks. Work is being successfully implemented at two of the properties. At the third property on Mount Carmel Road, Evans Landscaping substantially completed the field work ahead of schedule. We are now collaborating to submit all required documentation certifying project completion,” Evans wrote in a statement to WCPO.
