Milford residents will soon see an illegal landfill cleaned up. The Ohio EPA, Clermont County and Goshen Township are beginning debris removal from an unauthorized dump containing thousands of pounds of trash.
“We'll be out there with our contractor, with Rumpke, with some haulers, some folks who can take it to an appropriate solid waste landfill to where it will be safely disposed of,” Ohio EPA Director Anne Vogel said.
The cleanup comes years after Clermont County resident Donald Combs illegally dumped trash from his waste hauling business on the lot next to his home.
“We've had really good partners — Clermont County Commissioners, the prosecutor's office, the court system, the health department, Goshen Township — everybody has really pulled together to not let this go, to not let this guy get away with what he's been doing to this neighborhood,” Vogel said.
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Combs was sentenced to four years in prison in 2021 on multiple counts of illegal dumping. He used the property at his Milford home to dispose of construction materials and solid waste, according to a press release from the Ohio Attorney General.
“We don't have any evidence that anything has leached into the ground or any contamination to groundwater and we have been out there looking for that,” Vogel said. "Best case scenario, we're able to remove the solid waste and the debris from that site. We're going to do the grading, we're going to do the replanting, the reseeding of grass, and it should be good as new.”
The cleanup is estimated to take 10 days.