When an environmental consultant reported that a former auto-salvage yard had been cleaned up and was no longer a health risk, both the state and Jim Woodland believed him.
"It passed through everybody," said Woodland, who, based on the report, bought the West Side property in 2000 and moved his company, WK Music & Vending, there.
But now the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Woodland wonder whether the McKinley Avenue property still contains toxic chemicals, including benzene, toluene and xylene.
"If there is something here, I sure as hell want to know about it," Woodland said.
Dennis Smalley, the Lancaster-based environmental consultant who worked on Woodland's property and others, pleaded guilty last week to four felony counts of submitting fraudulent data, documents or reports to state agencies.
Now the state EPA and the Bureau of Underground Storage Tank Regulations must revisit nine sites across central and southern Ohio that Smalley said were cleaned up to determine whether hazardous pollutants lurk underground.
State inspectors already have cleared two other sites but have forced additional cleanup work at a fiberglass factory in Bremen in Fairfield County.
In 1998, the EPA certified Smalley to work in its voluntary-action program, in which businesses clean up environmental hazards themselves to avoid lawsuits. He also helped clean up spills from leaking underground fuel tanks at gas stations.
Frank Robertson, an EPA supervisor, said the 57-year-old president of Smalley & Associates is the first such consultant his program has prosecuted.
