EPA Secures Funding to Clean Toxic Sebring Site
SEBRING, Ohio – The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has secured additional funds to remediate a contaminated industrial site that has been a source of problems for years.
On Monday, the Ohio EPA won approval from the Ohio Controlling Board for another $4 million to clean two sites in northeastern Ohio, one of them the former Sebring Industrial Plating building on 546 W. Tennessee Ave.
Total funding for both projects now stands at $5,474,317.
The precise amount of the Sebring project’s share was not disclosed, but the money will be used to demolish the structure and remove toxic material so that the U.S. EPA could address contamination beneath the building and nearby residential yards. The U.S. EPA in August 2021 embarked on a cleanup at the site after the company shut down.
That cleanup involved removing 20,000 gallons of hazardous plating liquids, which contained cadmium – a known carcinogen – chromium and hydrochloric acids, according to EPA documents.
The dilapidated site has been an eyesore and danger for years, according to EPA records.
Three men involved with the business – Richard Sickelsmith, Samual Hopper and Brian Hopper – were convicted in November 2022 after pleading guilty to one count of hazardous waste violation, court papers show. According to court documents, Sickelsmith received five years’ probation and was ordered to pay $1 million restitution, beginning at $400 per month. Samual and Brian Hopper were ordered to pay $125 per month toward restitution of the $1 million.
Sickelsmith was a former owner of the company and sold it to the Hoppers, court records show.
Then, last year, Ohio Attorney General David Yost sued the company and its three associates for “injunctive relief and civil penalty” pertaining to eight violations, court papers say. In May of this year, Judge R. Scott Krichbaum upheld an earlier magistrate’s decision and ordered the defendants to pay the state of Ohio $1,250,000.
Sebring Industrial Plating opened in 1965 as a zinc and chrome electroplating facility. It closed in 2021, leaving behind barrels and exposed tanks of toxic waste, documents show.
A second remediation project – Diamond Hard Chrome in Cleveland, also a former electroplating operation – is targeted for a share of the cleanup funds, according to the Ohio EPA.
Pictured at top: Inside the former Sebring Industrial Plating building. (Ohio Environmental Protection Agency)
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