CINCINNATI — For a second time, Evans Landscaping and its owner Doug Evans have been accused of contempt after again failing to resolve environmental violations.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed the contempt motion on Friday, asking a judge to send Evans to jail for up to 30 days because he violated a court order, citing continuing issues discovered by Hamilton County Public Health investigators.
Yost sued Doug Evans in 2021 in the hopes of resolving Evans' decades worth of environmental violations, 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 at three Evans facilities near Newtown.
“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 did not respond to a request for comment made to his attorney, Andrew Kolesar.
Health officials warned Evans on May 3 to resolve outstanding violations by Thursday or risk fines of up to $1,000 per day and “additional court proceedings.”
On Friday, state prosecutors followed through with that threat filing a contempt motion that seeks jail time, fines, costs and a court hearing date.
“At this stage, we are consulting with our partners -- Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the Ohio Attorney General -- on next steps to bring this issue to resolution,” said Hamilton County Public Health Commissioner Greg Kesterman.
The Ohio EPA is also “evaluating all possible next steps,” to force compliance on violations that have been outstanding for months, a spokesperson said.
A spokesperson from Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office declined to comment.
Inspectors cited “reoccurring problems,” with buried waste, open dumping, scrap tires, illegal disposal of construction and demolition debris, and leachate runoff, at times into the Little Miami River.
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.
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 cleanup three facilities. But authorities say that didn’t happen.
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 cleanup 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.
But health officials accuse Evans of not following the judge’s cleanup order as they continue to find more violations.
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.
The Ohio EPA issued a new violation against Evans on Nov. 22 after discovering a milky white substance with an objectionable odor being discharged into the Little Miami River at his Round Bottom Road headquarters.
The agency issued a second violation on March 25, because Evans never responded to the first one.
“When water mixes with waste it weaponizes whatever toxic chemicals are in that waste, it makes a concentrated brew that then flows somewhere,” Cmar said. “Either it flows into the aquifer beneath the Evans site that is the drinking water for over a million people in Southwest Ohio, or it potentially runs off into the Little Miami River.”
A spokesperson from Hamilton County Public Health said there is no known immediate concern to public health or the environment. If people who live near the Round Bottom Road site are concerned, they can contact the health department.
This is the latest in a long string of legal troubles for Evans.
In 2014, Evans agreed to pay $300,000 in fines to settle a complaint with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency 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.
In an unrelated case, the FBI began investigating Evans in 2013 for minority contracting fraud. Evans insisted that he was innocent, but a jury convicted him in 2018 of using a shell company to win millions in state and government demolition contracts during the recession that were meant for minority and small businesses.
Evans served six months in prison, followed by several months of house arrest.
