NEWTOWN — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office withdrew contempt charges against Evans Landscaping owner Doug Evans on Monday, after he produced proof of that he was actively cleaning up illegal pollution from a facility in Anderson Township.
State prosecutors filed the contempt motion on August 28, asking a Hamilton County judge to jail Evans for 30 days because he had repeatedly violated a court order requiring cleanup at three landscaping and gravel facilities near Newtown.
While Evans may have resolved the environmental violations for now, prosecutors warn that this case is far from over.
“This, of course, does not mean that defendants have completed all of the work required under the consent order. Defendants are far from putting this case behind them,” Assistant Attorney General Allen Vender wrote in his motion withdrawing contempt charges.
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 signed a settlement and agreed to pay a $550,000 fine. The consent order listed specific cleanup requirements to correct more than 20 years of environmental violations.
But Evans allegedly ignored parts of the court order, delayed the cleanup, and didn’t do what health officials asked. Inspectors issued several notices of deficiency and violation against Evans for not removing illegal construction and demolition debris or putting it in containers.
Yost is focused on Evans’ facility at 8361 Broadwell Road, where health officials estimate 10,000 cubic yards of illegal waste is buried. That’s equivalent to 4,000 full-size pickup truckloads of debris.
When cleanup began in early August, instead of covering up the unearthed waste as the court order required, Evans allegedly left it exposed to rain and wind. He also did not remove the debris from the site and or submit mandatory progress reports, according to the contempt motion.
Now that seems to have changed.
“Defendants containerized the construction and demolition debris that was on the ground at 8361 Broadwell Road and produced receipts to confirm that (Evans) removed the material and disposed of the material at a licensed landfill,” Vender wrote. “Notably, this is the first time that Hamilton County Public Health has received any receipts to confirm defendants' lawful disposal of (debris) since the consent order.”
Evans also returned material that had been removed from the five-acre illegal dump site on Broadwell Road and produced a weekly summary report of progress.
“Significantly, defendants must have completed all necessary work after September 7, 2023, because the weekly summary report reflected that no work was done to remove construction and demolition debris between August 14 and September 7,” Vender wrote.
Cleanup at the Broadwell Road site is expected to take six months.
Since November, health officials have rejected Evans’ proposed cleanup plans four separate times, citing concerns about how waste and construction debris will be removed.
But a court battle is still brewing between Evans and prosecutors. Evans is challenging the consent order he signed with prosecutors last September as unworkable in the field. He wants the judge to approve a modified version of his own cleanup plan.
Evans also owes $10,800 in fines for violations that occurred between August 10 and September 11, according to prosecutors and based on the consent order.
