A former owner of the Sebring Industrial Plating facility in Ohio pled guilty to solid and hazardous waste charges.
Hazardous chemicals were stored at the site with proper permits.Richard Sickelsmith, 63, will have to pay a $1 million fine and will be placed on 5 years of probation. He received the sentence from Judge Anthony D’Apolito in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on May 5. He pled guilty to the charges on March 25.
Officials in Sebring near Youngstown say they discovered thousands of pounds of toxic materials during a search of the old plating plant in 2021.
The Mahoning Matters newspaper reports that Ohio Secretary of State records show Sebring Industrial Plating was first formed in 1965. Sickelsmith then assumed the company in 2014, and records show he handed the business off to Samual Hopper in March 2020.
In May 2021, the newspaper says Sebring officials charged operators Samual Hopper Jr., 24, and Brian Andrews Hopper, 22, both of Sebring, as well as Sickelsmith, 63, with felony counts of operating a hazardous waste facility without a license and storing hazardous waste at a facility without a license. The business itself is also named as a criminal defendant.
The Hoppers are due in court on May 26.
The Youngstown Vindicator says, “Sickelsmith was ordered to start paying the restitution at no less than $400 per month during the five years of his probation, said Martin Hume, assistant county prosecutor. Of the $1 million, $446,000 is owed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the remaining $654,000 is owed to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.”
Those two agencies are owed because they took care of the cleanup of hazardous wastes that were being stored on the property at 546 W. Tennessee Ave. in Sebring, Hume said.
In March 2021, Mahoning Matters says that during a warranted search of the 0.12-acre site in late March, Ohio EPA investigators found at least 38,000 pounds of hazardous waste, some of which had been at the site since 2016. To store less than half of that, a hazardous waste license is required.
