EPA official: D&L owner dumped drilling waste 6 times before getting caught
An official with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday that the embattled owner of D&L Energy and Hardrock Excavating, Ben W. Lupo, admitted to state officials that he has dumped drilling waste at least six times prior to being caught on Jan. 31.
In each instance, Kurt Kollar, an on-scene coordinator with the OEPA’s division of Emergency and Remedial Response, told The Vindicator that employees were instructed to dump 42,000 gallons of brine material and oil-based mud.
That amounts to a total of 252,000 gallons of the waste dumped at the property since September. Lupo was first caught by state regulators on Jan. 31 after they received an anonymous tip.
The early results of an ongoing criminal investigation show that Lupo directed an employee to dump a mix of oil and brine water down a storm drain at Hardrock’s headquarters at 2761 Salt Springs Road.
Comments
gee. I'm totally shocked. No. Really. Just shocked.
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Wow! I'm "shocked" also......shocked if he only did it six times. Hooray for the folks who caught them and DO NOT cut them any slack on this one....
Has anyone forgot where we are? With the money he has it will be a fine a fraction of the money he made polluting the water and probation.
Without wasting any time we should impose a seven dollar per gallon environmental impact tax on all gas and diesel fuel. Green energy development should be put in high gear! This tax should also be levied on all natural gas at the rate of seven dollars per thousand cubic feet paid by end users. LET US STOP THE MADNESS AND GO GREEN!
That's still only a total of six incidents of pollution in the entire industry in fifty years.
Sorta like one nuclear explosion accident over a populated area? You do understand some of these chemicals are around for thousands of years. And it's one company that hasn't been in business for 50 years and has how many violations? and how many don't we know ?
Oh hey, though! Jobs, y'all!
@STOP please stop with your asinine comments, you're making a fool of yourself.
Ytown....that was sarcasm.
And this is what I mean by RESPONSIBLE operators in the oil and gas industry...they are far and few apart and most can't be trusted...especially with what they say.
They haven't changed in the past 10 or 20 years despite whatever they claim, because all they are concerned with are the profits in their pockets and not with how they damage the communities they live and work in. Because of their actions they drive monitoring costs up, mitigation efforts up and fuel prices up.