NEWTOWN, Ohio — Hamilton County health officials and the Ohio EPA are reviewing a cleanup plan to remove buried solid waste from an Evans Landscaping facility on Broadwell Road in Anderson Township.
An environmental firm hired by owner Doug Evans submitted the clean-up plan on Nov. 28 as part of a $550,000 settlement with Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost to remedy more than two decades of environmental violations.
Health officials estimate that 6,000 to 10,000 cubic yards of illegal waste may be buried on a five-acre portion of the 8361 Broadwell Road site. That means a full-size pickup truck, which typically holds 2.5 cubic yards, would have to make as many as 4,000 trips to haul away the waste.
“We will work with Ohio EPA during the next week to evaluate the cleanup plan,” says Hamilton County health commissioner Greg Kesterman. “This evaluation will determine next steps as we work to approve the plan and begin remediation. It is important to work toward protecting our environment and ensuring that any environmental damage is cleaned up.”
The 40-page consent order, signed by a Hamilton County judge on Sept. 29, contains specific cleanup requirements to correct environmental violations at three Evans landscaping and gravel facilities near Newtown.
“We’ve got three separate sites, all of them threatened the Little Miami Watershed, and from two of the sites we found actual leachate, leaching out into the water. So it was well past time to actually do something here,” said Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost in an October interview with WCPO.
Yost sued Evans last March, at the request of Hamilton County and the Ohio EPA. County records showinspectors cited “reoccurring problems,” with the burial of waste, open dumping, scrap tires, illegal disposal of construction and demolition debris, and leachate runoff, at times into the Little Miami River.
Evans, 60, 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.
“I don’t want to drive people out of business if we don’t have to. If we can convince them to follow the law, clean up this mess, straighten up and play fair with the rest of the community then … everybody’s better off,” Yost said. “But make no mistake about it, we’re done playing games. And if the long arm of the law needs to come down harder on this guy – it will.”
The part of Evans’ business that health inspectors have targeted repeatedly is the recycling of construction and demolition debris operation.
While Evans agreed to clean up the construction waste and debris, he still maintains that he did not break the law, according to the consent order.
A spokesman for Evans did not return several requests for comment but in a statement to WCPO in October, he said, “Evans Landscaping has taken or will take the necessary corrective actions to address the alleged violations in accordance with the consent order.”
So far, that seems to be what Evans is doing.
The consent order sets a very specific timeline for the cleanup:
- At the 4229 Round Bottom Road sites, where Evans corporate headquarters are located on 90 acres that abut the Little Miami River, he installed two groundwater monitoring wells in November. A county health department spokesman said agencies are awaiting information from the installer to “assess adequacy.”
- At the 78-acre Mt. Carmel Road site, where Evans Gravel is located, crews have recently removed waste from a portion of the site — 0.25 acres on the western portion. But due to “historic, uncontrolled filling” on 14 acres of the northern portion of the site, Evans must either remove the illegal debris or cap the waste area.
- At the 8361 Broadwell Road facility, crews used an excavator to dig 16 test pits at least 25-feet deep or until native soil or water was reached. Health department officials and the Ohio EPA supervised the digging on November 9 and 10. Of the 16 test pits, they discovered that 14 contained waste. That prompted an environmental firm, hired by Evans, to submit a proposed plan to begin cleanup no later than April 2023 and span six months or longer.
Ray PfefferAerial image of Doug Evans' facility on Broadwell Road in Anderson Township where health officials say illegal waste is buried.
WCPO requested videos and photos from the county health department of the test pit digging. The black material in the photos below show the waste. It is recovered screen material which is leftover from the recycling of construction debris and contains organics like wood and other items such as dry wall, small bits of plastic and other waste.
Health officials targeted this buried waste in notices of violations in December 2020 and March 2021. They wrote that “significant amounts of stockpiled recovered screen material” stored in a giant stockpile at the Round Bottom Road facility continue to be removed while, “coincidentally” the waste has been found disposed at the Broadwell Road site.
Using aerial photos, health inspectors found a large area on the Broadwell Road site consisting of small particles of wood, drywall, plastics, roofing, insulation, brick, glass, aggregates, and soil.
“Mr. Evans has had recurring problems with improper management of clean hard fill and compost comingled with prohibited materials, along with the burial of waste over the past twenty years at various sites,” health inspectors wrote in a December 2020 violation notice.
While Evans is allowed to use his own equipment for the cleanup, the consent order also requires him to use third-party professionals such as scientists and engineers to conduct groundwater testing and determine how much solid waste to excavate from test pits. But each step will be monitored by the Ohio EPA and Hamilton County health inspectors.
If Evans breaches the agreement, he may be forced to pay $300 to $1,000 per day until the violations are resolved, according to the consent order.
“If you break a court order, you could be thrown in jail for contempt,” Yost said in an October interview. “We are going to be eagle eyes on Mr. Evans. I assure you that if we find he is not following that agreement to the letter, we’re going to be back in front of that judge saying, 'Judge, hold him accountable.'"
This is the latest in a string of legal troubles for Evans.
Evans was released from prison last Decemberafter serving six months for minority contracting fraud, followed by several months of house arrest.
Last month a Clermont County judge and Union Township zoning officials accused Evans of illegally operating businesses on Mt. Carmel Road land that is zoned for open space and agriculture.
In 2014, Evans agreed to pay $300,000 in fines to settle a complaint with the Ohio EPA over air pollution violations. He also agreed to a $100,000 tree-planting project to serve as a natural windbreak for dust and emissions from his stonework, gravel and sand operations in Hamilton and Clermont counties.
