STEUBENVILLE — The Jefferson County Commissioners finished Thursday’s meeting the same way they started– irritated at suggestions they were already on board with Interstate Waste Service’s efforts to secure grant funding for additional on-site storage.

The three commissioners said nothing could be farther from the truth.

“We did not (approve it),” Commissioner Tony Morelli said at the start of the meeting. “Did I say some positive things? I did, and I’ll say them again as far as the condition of what the landfill looks like now compared to what it looked like before they took over. I got a lot of phone calls — I called as many back as I could. We had budget hearings this week, it was a very, very busy week for all of us, so I haven’t got to everyone. The ones that I did talk to, I told them.”

ISW representatives had been at the Dec. 4 meeting of the commissioners to solicit a letter of support for a multi-million-dollar project they said would provide additional on-site storage, so there’d be less need to store rail cars off site. They also want the money to pave their intermodal loading and unloading area and modernize the gondola building, as well as to acquire Buy America-compliant heavy equipment and secure associated design and engineering services.

Commissioners had said they needed time to review the information before they can decide whether to support the grant application.

“I was pretty shocked when I saw the stories (on broadcast media) that said commissioners approved the letter,” Commissioner Eric Timmons said. “I had no intention of supporting it, so I’ll make that clear — that’s still my stance. It was news to me when I (saw) that in the media, and like I said, I don’t support it.”

Commissioner Jake Kleineke also said residents throughout the county have had to deal with stinky rail cars filled with out-of-state garbage backed up, waiting to be processed.

“It’s not just an Amsterdam and Bergholz problem, it’s happening all over the county. You should do business where you do business, not spread all over,” Kleineke said.

“But I also want people to understand that it’s not the commissioners (doing it),” he continued. “We don’t have the power to regulate a private entity to do business however they do business, that’s their business…it’s just a letter of support for their grant application for their own business. It has nothing to do with the commissioners. We can decide to support it, we can decide not to support it. Commissioner Morelli said here that we don’t have all the facts, and we’re not going to vote on anything (without facts.) We just want that made clear.”

Later, during the public appearance portion of the meeting, Amsterdam Mayor Jim Phillips said the ISW representative had asked him to submit a letter of support for the project as well and he reminded him it’s his council that votes on such things, not him, and the request should be submitted to council along with “empirical data” supporting their assertions.

Phillips said he also asked the ISW representatives how the expansion would benefit the county, “and he said a very big benefit would be eliminating the odor in Mingo Junction.”

“But I don’t think you’re ever going to see that,” Phillips said. “There’s an endless sea of trash coming from New York and New Jersey, and it doesn’t matter how fast they can process it, it’s still time, right? So in my opinion, and I may be wrong, but if they do this expansion they are going to have all this extra track.”

Phillips conceded there has been some improvement since ISW took over, pointing out “they’ve done some nice things for the community, handouts and things like that, I’ll give them that.” But he figures additional track invariably means even more rail cars backed up, waiting for processing.

“Everyone talks about the odor, and the odor is an inconvenience, it’s a problem,” Phillips said, adding that an arguably bigger concern is whether the oil and gas waste products being brought to the landfill are being properly tested and monitored.

Phillips told commissioners the village had “respectively declined” submitting a letter of intent for the expansion “because there’s no data to back up their claims. And you know, we don’t make decisions based on pinky promises.”

In other business, commissioners said that, in the event the Jefferson County Drug Task Force is awarded an Ohio Drug Law Enforcement Grant they would serve as subgrantee.