STEUBENVILLE — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost toured the Crossridge Landfill site Thursday, saying he wanted to see conditions there for himself in advance of a June court date.

What he saw didn’t make him happy.

“On the back side of the landfill, where the valves and stuff are … there is ominous-looking stuff, like out of a science fiction horror movie, oozing out of the ground and heading toward … Cross Creek,” he said. “It’s red and oily; the only thing missing is the bubbles and vapor. You don’t need to be a chemist to know it’s bad stuff. (The) water flows down hill with everything in it.”

Yost’s tour guides were site inspectors with the Jefferson County Health Department. In September 2021, Visiting Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Richard J. McMonagle had granted the health department and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency inspectors have had “unhindered access” to the landfill site to do inspections, obtain samples, take photographs, perform measurements, conduct surveys and other necessary activities. Owner Joseph Scugoza appealed that order, but lost.

County Health District Commissioner Andrew Henry said they found out at 9:30 a.m. Thursday the attorney general wanted to see the property. It required rearranging some of their schedules on short notice, he said, “but I think it was a worthwhile visit.”

“We appreciate the attention he is giving the situation, since the case has dragged on for so long,” Henry said. “We definitely taught him about landfills and the effects that it can have on the surrounding environment. I’m sure he knew very high-level information, but we really showed him the bad stuff that he would’ve otherwise never known, such as open dump and a pool of leachate.”

Yost agreed it’s “been going on way too long.”

“More importantly, I got a first-hand view of how this is impacting the environment and, particularly, (how) close (it is) to the Ohio River. I’m deeply concerned by what I saw, troubled by what I saw,” he said, adding there’s “dangerous stuff full of ammonia and other things seeping out of that landfill bc was never properly closed and its time for that to stop.

“The most troubling thing is how long it’s been going on — it goes back to the late 90s, and to be sitting here in 2022 … I’m all for due process but this is overdue process.”

He said he’s instructed his staff to “pull out all the stops.”

“If there’s anything we have not done that I can do, I want to do it,” he said, pointing out that, “It’s important to know, under modern law we wouldn’t be here: There’s certain guarantees that have to be given when you open a landfill that you can close it. This landfill is old enough those laws don’t apply, but still the property owners have a responsibility to close the landfill and protect the environment and they have not done that.”

He said the cost to clean the landfill has been pegged in the $7 million to $8 million range.