Where Do We Cross the Line: From Public Service to Public Threat

For over 70 years, Ross Incineration Services’ Hazardous Waste Incinerator and Storage Facility operated under the radar for much of our community in Eaton Township, Ohio. But when states such as Michigan, Texas, and Oklahoma refused to accept the hazardous waste from the train derailment in East Palestine (EP) and we discovered that it was destined for Eaton Township, it created an awakening within our community to the risk that we incur on a daily basis from hazardous waste being sent here from 21 states.¹

As serendipity would have it, during that same timeframe, Ross was in the process of applying for a 218-acre zoning change to increase their heavy industrial footprint. They plan to create a monofill to dump their hazardous waste ash. This zoning change may have slipped past us had Ross not been in the national news for receiving the waste. However, after several well attended, heated public hearings, the Eaton Township trustees approved a reduced amount of 65 acres to be rezoned to heavy industrial zoning by a 2-1 vote on October 4, 2023. The trustees deferred to the EPA to protect the health, safety and welfare of the residents. Our community immediately banded together and filed a petition against their decision.

As a result, Issue 19 will go before the Eaton Township, Ohio, electors on the March 19, 2024, Ohio primary election to ultimately decide whether or not the 65 acres will be rezoned to heavy industrial zoning. But it’s only through an exhaustive fight by residents that we have this chance of holding them back. As Ross continues to find new ways to expand within our primarily residential and agricultural community, we have to ask: Is the EPA and local government doing enough to protect the residents? Are human and environmental safety being kept at a high enough priority?

The Beginning of Ross Incineration

According to local legend, Robert Ross began burning agricultural waste in 1949 as a means of disposal rather than dumping. Mr. Ross drove around in his truck and picked up barrels of waste from local farmers and businesses. Locals attended “parties” on his farm where they would watch the barrels jump and see the different colors the waste would create when it was burned. This open burning occurred between 1949 and 1966.² Ross also dumped non-burnable waste into impoundments and a landfill.

In 1971, residents’ complaints culminated with the formation of the North Eaton Anti-Pollution League that sued Ross, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Health Department and the Trustees for allowing Ross to operate its unpermitted incinerator, landfill and impoundments on land zoned residential. The result of that lawsuit and its subsequent Appeal by the Ninth District Court of Appeals Jan. 10, 1973 Case No. 2058³ placed a permanent injunction on the landfill and impoundments, i.e. the dumping of non-burnable liquid and solid waste.

However, the lawsuit actually did a disservice to the residents by allowing the continued operation of the incinerator since the non-conforming use began prior to the zoning code on November 7, 1950.  What this means is that the open burning of industrial waste in a pit on a farmer’s field prior to 1950 laid the groundwork for allowing a hazardous waste incinerator to operate in a residential/agricultural community even while ignoring the requirement for a permit and zoning code change by the Trustees in the 60s.⁴ But while the Appeal allowed the incinerator to operate, it also was limited to the present volume⁵ of that disposal, preventing an expansion.

Yet the very next year, in 1974, Ross began digging eight new impoundments⁶ to install an open-loop incinerator which was permitted by the EPA who was in full awareness of the injunction against impoundments and yet still allowed them to be dug.⁷ Those impoundments allowed the dumping of scrubber water for cooling, fly ash settling and sludge storage and were used until 1986⁸ when a closed-loop incinerator was installed, ending the usefulness of the impoundments.

This dumping of hazardous waste into those impoundments coincided with the timing of the 1979 documentary The Killing Ground⁹ by Brit Hume. It revealed the dumping of hazardous waste onto the land and the resulting toxic exposures to residents in communities across the US while the EPA failed to do its job.  Although that film was primarily focused on the Love Canal in New York state, at the end they listed the most unhealthy places in the country and Grafton, Ohio,was included in that list. Ross’ address is Grafton, Ohio,because Eaton Township doesn’t have a post office.The fallout from the open-loop incinerator’s impoundments was eventually revealed through our research in a US EPA report titled Documentation of Environmental Indicator Determination, RCRA Corrective Action: Current Human Exposures Under Control.¹⁰ This was a shocking revelation since no one had informed the residents that human exposures were ever out of control!  Why wasn’t the public notified?

Environmental Contamination

This report from February 5, 1999, reveals extensive contamination of groundwater, surface water, surface soil, subsoil and sediment as a result of that EPA-permitted open-loop incinerator operation.  A horrifying number of toxic chemicals were listed including PCBs, phthalates, heavy metals, trichloroethylene, and benzene.  There were too many chemicals found in the test borings to list in the report. Residents were potential human receptors from contaminated groundwater and surface water. Workers were potentially exposed from soil, surface water and air while contamination may have affected surrounding food crops. Residents may have been potentially exposed to offsite migration of contaminated groundwater to the west of the facility with no controls in place to prevent off-site residential use of groundwater.  Ross apparently worked to clean up the impoundments but their hazardous waste incineration operation has left their land unusable for residential living.  There is an Environmental Covenant¹¹ with the EPA on that parcel of land restricting its use, including the use of groundwater for human consumption. That land is damaged forever.  And now they want to damage more land forever by using 23 acres to dump their incinerator bottom ash and filter cake.

In addition, Ross owns land in Eaton Township under many different company names which we believe to total to over 1500 acres.  Most of that land has deed restrictions forbidding it to be used in a way similar to the Environmental Covenant restrictions.  On most of the deed restrictions the only allowed use is industrial or agricultural use.  In fact the parcels on which the Pine Brook Golf Course sits, Invisible Properties,¹² restricts that land to be used as a golf course although they have appeared to have exempted the current one.  The violation of a  deed restriction “shall be deemed to cause irreparable harm and there shall be deemed to be no adequate remedy at law.” What would be the purpose for these deed restrictions other than to protect Ross from liability in the event of a future hazardous waste disaster or for something that they may already be aware of that happened in the past such as the industrial waste fire that destroyed the facility in 1975? Or is it their concern over the accumulation on the land from their chronic emissions?  Whatever the reason, some deed restrictions are considered illegal, including those that violate zoning laws.¹³

Another route for pollution from the incinerator is emissions into the air. The EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory site shows Ross’ air emissions.¹⁴ They are “permitted” to pollute into the national airspace. For example, in 2022 Ross emitted 38 lb of mercury compounds into the national air space. That is within their legal limit–but it doesn’t mean that it’s healthy. The lethal dose of methyl mercury is 200 mg.¹⁵ Mercury is toxic in milligram amounts and a pound consists of 453,592.37 milligrams. Mercury, being a heavy metal, persists in the environment and bioaccumulates in wildlife and humans. It’s important to note that one third of our population is missing this essential GSTM1 gene which is involved in the function of  glutathione, our master antioxidant in our bodies. That missing gene compromises heavy metal and chemical detoxification functions.¹⁶ Dr. Mark Hyman, Head of Strategy and Innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, has noticed it missing in most of his chronically ill patients. I, myself, am missing that gene and have struggled with heavy metal toxicity and allergy, chemical sensitivities, and chronic health issues throughout my entire life. I have paid out of pocket for most of my health care at a significant expense from alternative health care providers, the only resources that I could find that understands detoxification.

Another useful tool for which we can evaluate the risk inherent in Ross’ operation is also provided by the EPA. It involves assigning Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI)¹⁷ as a screening-level model that analyzes factors that contribute to human health risk. These factors include the amount of chemical released, the degree of toxicity, and the size of the exposed population. RSEI calculates scores to highlight releases that would potentially pose greater risk over a lifetime of exposure. These numbers are considered comparable and not absolute.