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Judge sets hearing in landfill case

STEUBENVILLE — The visiting judge presiding over the Crossridge landfill case is going to have to decide if Barbara Scugoza can be held in contempt of environmental orders that didn’t have her name on them when they were issued.

Judge Timothy Hogan, a retired Hamilton County Common Pleas Court judge and former federal court magistrate, was assigned to hear the landfill case in September after Common Pleas Judge Michelle Miller recused herself to avoid the “appearance of impropriety.”

Scugoza is asking the court to dismiss the contempt charges the state filed against her in its amended complaint, claiming that the environmental orders “were directed to others, that she had no actual notice of these orders and that she has never been an agent, CEO, sole shareholder or otherwise involved” in the Crossridge operation.

The state contends Scugoza is the sole shareholder and CEO of Crossridge and related entities and had knowledge of the previous regulatory orders “although those orders were not directed to her,” and suggests that, in reality, she was “acting in concert or participation with those whose acts are sought to be restrained.”

Hogan scheduled a hearing for 9 a.m. May 15, saying it was needed because “the proof for both personal jurisdiction and contempt are too inter-related to separate.”

In the same order, he denied Scugoza’s motion for a jury trial and overruled her motion to order the state to release assets Miller had frozen, saying it was “premature.”

During a site visit in August, two members of the Jefferson County Health Department’s Environmental Health Division discovered leachate was being pumped from a tank and discharged over a hill above Cross Creek. Leachate is created when water passes through solid waste.

A month later, Miller ordered Scugoza to ensure all leachate is lawfully disposed of at a wastewater treatment facility, and provide biweekly receipts to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. She also ordered Scugoza to install a pump and flow meter for the leachate storage tank that accurately records the volume of the liquid removed from the tank, and provide the data to the Ohio EPA.

Weeks after Miller stepped aside, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency issued a letter to then-Crossridge owner Joe Scugoza, notifying him he hadn’t complied with the orders she had issued, including requiring him to ensure the safe disposal of leachate — created when water passes through solid waste — as well as the proper closing of the landfill, located off of county Road 26 in Cross Creek Township.

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