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- David Rawson, owner of Recycled Earth, was charged Friday with unlawful pollutant discharge.
- Prosecutors allege Rawson dumped wastewater into Ogden's waterways in 2022 and 2023.
- Documentation from the Utah Department of Environmental Quality show Rawson had completed remediation actions.
OGDEN — David Rawson, the owner of construction material recycling business Recycled Earth, was charged Friday in 2nd District Court with two counts of unlawful discharge of pollutants, a third-degree felony, accusing him of pollution discharges into Ogden's waterways in 2022 and 2023.
In August 2022, a number of organizations — the Weber-Morgan Health Department, the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, and the city of Ogden — began investigating "complaints from the public of a noxious smell," charging documents say.
Authorities traced "the source of the odor and the discharge" to Recycling Earth, with charges alleging Rawson was accepting "liquid oil and gas-related wastewater" at his facility and dumping it without a permit, after building "an unpermitted pipe system" that feeds into the "municipal MS4."
An MS4, according to the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, is a term for the systems of drainage on roads, municipal streets, curbs, gutters, ditches, man-made channels, or storm drains.
Rawson, a 54-year-old Pleasant View resident, was aware he was not allowed to be dumping the liquid waste into Ogden's drainage systems, the charges allege.
Documentation of an investigation plan for the Department of Environmental Quality by Recycled Earth claims that the recyclers had entered into an agreement with another company in February 2022, agreeing to accept rainwater filtered through gravel to be used to control dust at the recycling center's concrete crushing operations.
Recycled Earth sued that company in 2022, alleging that it was surprised by the complaints from the public and found out that the "two-to-four tank loads" of "clean fill dirt washout" it had been accepting and spraying of the crushing operations actually contained "grease, petroleum hydrocarbons, concrete washout water, and car wash sump waste," an amended complaint says.
In the complaint, Rawson claims the situation negatively impacted his business in significant ways, with the city of Ogden going elsewhere for its recycling needs.
Both parties agreed to dismiss the suit with prejudice in October 2024, meaning it cannot be filed again in court.
Comments from the Department of Environmental Quality document also claim Rawson had admitted to an inspector that he had been accepting concrete washwater since 2016, which is "a slurry containing toxic metals" and is "caustic and corrosive, having a pH near 12."
The site was constructed in 2015 by Recycled Earth and was developed over prior agricultural lands, the report says.
The city of Ogden installed a plug on the company's discharge outlet, charges say. The Department of Environmental Quality report prepared in 2022 by Recycled Earth claims that the next day, "Ogden city removed the culvert plug at the 2550 S. Street due to concerns for flooding."
On Aug. 20, 2022, that report says, "Recycled Earth stopped water from entering the city's stormwater system and began pumping the on-site inlet box into a temporary pond to remove potentially impacted groundwater."
In September, charges say authorities "observed that the plug at the outlet had been compromised."
A detention pond, where wastewater was collecting until remediation was done, appeared "noticeably lower," and water was leaking from the plug, charges say. It is not stated in what way the plug was allegedly compromised or by whom.
On Sept. 30, 2022, the city issued a compliance order, requiring soil and water samples be taken of the waste pond, an environmental report for the cleanup be written, and a water pollution prevention plan be completed, among other steps, charges say.
Again on Jan. 13, 2023, charges allege there was another discharge into the Ogden waterways, and the city issued another compliance order after "multiple written warnings and other communications urging (Recycling Earth) to address ongoing leakage and the potential for overflow from the on-site detention pond."
"The detention basin is piped to the Ogden city municipal storm water drainage system ... and eventually discharges to the Weber River approximately 2 miles north of the site," the Department of Environmental Quality report says.
A $1,000 penalty was also issued for the January 2023 discharge but was never paid, charges state. The company claims it has appealed that penalty with the mayor, and it is pending, the Department of Environmental Quality report says.
A day before charges were filed, Rawson got a letter from Douglas Hansen, director of the division of waste management and radiation control at the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. It says that the corrective action and soil remediation on the site, related to the alleged discharges, were complete.
No court date has been scheduled yet.
