Chemical companies, commercial incinerators, environmental activists, cement kilns fight over air standards Grassroots Advocates for the Ohio Environment focused on clean water, toxic chemical reductions, urban sprawl, and public participation. When Tom Ward's engineering firm started to outgrow its offices in Grandview Heights, he ignored advice to move to the vanishing cornfields of outer suburbia and decided instead to renovate an abandoned scrap yard on the edge of town. Critics, though, say that the property reclaimed by Ward Engineering is an example of the program's flaws.
Environmentalists say the program needs more oversight, money and public participation.
Depending on who you ask, it's either too weak, too stringent or too slow,'' said Bruce Cornett of the Green Environmental Coalition, a nonprofit watchdog group in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Cornett's group released a study yesterday of Ohio's brownfields program, which allows property owners to hire state-certified contractors to clean up a site without public hearings or government oversight. When work is completed through the Voluntary Action Program, or VAP, the contractor notifies the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. In exchange for an approved cleanup, the agency promises the landowners that the state will not sue if old pollution is found at the site. Former Gov. George V. Voinovich and other backers vowed that the program would result in 200 cleanups a year.