STEUBENVILLE — Crossridge Landfill owner Joseph Scugoza, sentenced earlier this week to 180 days in jail for contempt of court, has filed notice of his intent to appeal.

Scugoza, 45, was booked into the Jefferson County Jail Tuesday after Judge Richard McMonagle, tasked by the Ohio Supreme Court with hearing the decades-old case, found him to be in “indirect contempt” for failing to comply with so-called “purge” conditions he’d set in February 2023.

The Ohio Public Defender Commission defines indirect contempt as “willful disobedience of court orders outside of the court, which make it more difficult for the court to do its job.”

McMonagle in July 2021 had sentenced Scugoza to 200 days in jail for civil contempt due to his alleged failure to properly close the landfill and meet post-closure obligations, but he appealed and the higher court granted his motion for a stay of the jail sentence, opining that the trial court’s purge conditions “lacked specificity and the jail sentence was excessive.”

On remand, McMonagle in February 2023 reduced the jail time to 30 days but held it in abeyance pending Scugoza’s compliance with his purge conditions — depositing $10,000 a month into a trust fund to cover proper closing and post-closure care of the landfill; ensuring the landfill leachate management system “is operated as designed,” including, among other things, installing pumps and flow meters as well as high level alarms with an advanced telemetry system and keeping the valve from the leachate to the storage system open; and removing 750 tons of solid waste from the recycling area per month.

The case stems from the state’s two-decade long effort to hold Scugoza and his now-deceased parents, Joseph and Barbara Scugoza, accountable for alleged environmental violations at Crossridge and its sister company, C&L Disposal Technologies.