By Rod Rose/The Lebanon Reporter
Lebanon — State officials claim a rural salvage yard owner has violated legal agreements to clean up his property.
John King, owner of John King Salvage Yard, 2305 W. County Road 250 South, has 20 days to remove waste tires from the site, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management ordered him in an Aug. 20 letter.
Boone County Health Department environmentalist Sharon Adams told the Boone County Commissioners Friday that IDEM tests showed King had collected water runoff samples on Aug. 24, a day rain wasn’t confirmed anywhere else in the county.
Adams said weather observers of the CoCoRaHS network recorded zero rainfall at 13 Boone County locations on Aug. 24.
Storm water runoff tests are to be done during a storm, Adams said.
Officials worry surface runoff from the site, and below-ground leaching, could contaminate nearby water sources. The North Fork of Big Walnut Creek runs along the salvage yard. Neighboring homes use wells for their water.
While King “has done a fair amount of work” in cleaning up the site, Adams said, a July 8 IDEM inspection found multiple violations of the court order to which King had agreed. Waste tires were not stored properly; there were no records of tire shipments to licensed disposal sites and some waste tires were filled with water, IDEM inspector Gary Romesser said he found after an Aug. 7 inspection.
Adams gave a copy of Romesser’s report to the commissioners Friday.
In December 2007 King agreed to clean up the used appliances, cars, tires, batteries, farm equipment and other junk strewn across several fields on his land about 2 miles southwest of Lebanon.
A June 2006 IDEM inspection accused King of multiple environmental rules violations, including storing tires on the ground without a cover; sending used oil for disposal to an unlicensed business and not following Indiana’s storm water permit rules.
King is to appear in Superior Court II at 1:30 p.m. Sept. 3 for a hearing on the his compliance with the agreement, Adams said.
