Photo Provided This image shows waste from gas and oil fracking operations stored inside the Austin Master Services facility in Martins Ferry. The photo was taken during an April inspection by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Times Leader presents a look back at the past year this week with Eastern Ohio’s Top 10 stories of 2024, as selected by the newspaper’s editorial staff.

AFTER YEARS of warnings from the Concerned Ohio River Residents, it was revealed in March that Austin Master Services LLC allegedly had violated its permit and was storing hundreds of tons of dangerous waste within its Martins Ferry facility.

And mere weeks after Ohio Attorney Dave Yost took legal action to halt the frack waste processing plant’s operations and force a cleanup, flooding of the nearby Ohio River threatened to breach the facility and release hazardous and radioactive contamination.

A lawsuit filed in March in Belmont County Common Pleas Court alleged that more than 10,000 tons of solid and liquid waste — some of which is radioactive — had accumulated at the former steel mill at 4K Industrial Park along First Street near the city’s water well field despite the fact that Austin Master was only permitted to house 600 tons of the material there.

Belmont County Common Pleas Judge John Vavra subsequently ordered Austin Master to cease operations at the location and to reduce the amount of waste on site to a permitted level. ODNR has since stepped in and launched a cleanup effort.

Now, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources is working to preserve evidence and ensure the state will be reimbursed as the cleanup proceeds.

“The cleanup is ongoing and is on schedule,” ODNR said via email Monday in response to a request for a status update.

Bridgeport resident Beverly Reed, a member of the CORR organization, recently approached Martins Ferry City Council to inquire about progress at the site. While Mayor John Davies told Reed that he has seen progress at the plant and that work continues on a daily basis, Reed warned that court filings show the state is seeking to ensure that AMS and its ownership are not able to conceal or destroy evidence in the case and that the business pays for the cleanup, which will cost more than $6 million according to the terms of a contract secured by ODNR.

Court documents indicate that the state requested a restraining order to ensure Brad Domitrovitsch, CEO of Austin Master’s parent company American Environmental Partners Inc., cannot destroy or dispose of 61 boxes of business records related to AMS that had been in the possession of a former company employee.

In a filing seeking to have Domitrovitsch turn those records over, Yost states that ODNR’s Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management was contacted by that employee, Wayne Minnicks, saying that Domitrovitsch had retrieved 61 boxes of records from him. The filing states that Minnicks also told state officials that when he had asked Domitrovitsch what to do with the records, Domitrovitsch told him to destroy them.

The state also filed for a restraining order to halt Domitrovitsch from selling off assets of the company, such as a skidsteer, an office trailer and other large equipment, since he has disavowed control over AMS operations.

In court filings, ODNR and Yost point out that Austin Master took in substantial revenue for accepting the excess waste that had been stored at the plant, yet Domitrovitsch claims he is unable to fund the cleanup of the site.

At the facility, meanwhile, the first phase of cleanup is complete. According to ODNR Media and Outreach Specialist Karina Cheung, that work was done by a contractor under an existing state contract for environmental remediation. She said the bid for the cleanup’s second phase was awarded to Select Water Solutions LLC with a contract bid of $6.1 million. The Ohio Controlling Board approved the release of oil and gas funds to cover that expense in September.

“ODNR fully intends to seek reimbursement from Austin Master Services, its parent company, and CEO Brad Domitrovitsch,” Cheung wrote in an email.

The first phase of the work was finished on Aug. 9, according to Cheung. That contractor removed 3,000 tons of waste from the facility.

“The second phase of the cleanup is still underway and is expected to be fully remediated by May 23, 2025, per the contract,” Cheung added.

The goal is to return the facility to a condition that will allow it to be used for further development. 4K Industrial has filed a lawsuit against Austin Master claiming breach of contract due to unpaid rent and 4K’s loss of use of the facility, as it cannot be rented to another business until the waste inside is remediated. That is a complicated process, according to ODNR.

“The remediation requires thorough cleaning, which will involve multiple rounds of power washing throughout the entire site,” Cheung noted. “The comprehensive and time-consuming cleaning will bring the Austin Master Services site into the same condition it was in before it ever was the site of an oil and gas waste facility. Appropriate industry tests and sampling will take place inside and outside the facility building.”