SW Ohio man gets one week in prison for each of 200 illegal dumped scrap tires

Ronald Ison, 37, of Hillsboro in Highland County, will have the next four years to think about the consequences of dumping more than 200 scrap tires at various locations, including at the 3,465-acre Rocky Fork State Park and the 5,090-acre Paint Creek Wildlife Area.

Ison ultimately pleaded guilty to seven counts of illegal open dumping of scrap tires and one count of illegal transportation of scrap tires following an intensive multi-jurisdictional investigation. Ison also had to pay $730 to the local solid waste district for the cleanup cost.

Thus, Ison’s sentence October 17th by Highland County Common Pleas Court Judge Rocky A. Coss amounts to serving about one week in prison for each tire he illegally pitched.

The severity of Ison’s sentence stunned even officials with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Wildlife who were expecting jail time of about 60 days plus perhaps some community service.

The Wildlife Division worked the case after officers with the agency in Highland County were getting tips of tires scrap tires repeatedly being dumped along rural roads, said both Michele Welsh, law enforcement supervisor for the agency’s District Five (southwest Ohio) Office in Xenia, and her boss, Ken Fitz, the Wildlife Division’s law enforcement administrator in Columbus.

“We were fully impressed with that sentence,” Welsh said. “It should send a loud and clear message to others thinking of doing the same thing.”

Working closely with the Wildlife Division were officials with the Ohio Attorney General Office’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s Environmental Enforcement Unit. It was Ohio Attorney General David Yost’s staff with this section that prosecuted the case against Ison.

Welsh, Fitz and Yost said Ison collected the tires from a junk yard dealer who was closing his business, making several trips to assemble about 20 to 30 tires at a time and then illegally pitching them from his pick-up truck. The illegal activity began in October 2017, the three law enforcement officials all said.

“There were seven dump sites,” Welsh said. “The junk yard dealer did say that had he known the tires were going to be dumped illegally he’d never had hired Ison.”

Welsh said also the junk yard dealer will not be charged as his involvement did not include any illegal activity.

Yost said the situation was so acute that in one instance, some of the tires Ison had discarded on a Paint Township roadway had “disabled a school bus that was transporting children, causing them to arrive late for school.”

“This guy created a public safety hazard, trashed the public’s land and then forced the public to foot the bill to clean up his mess,” Yost said. “This is where the rubber meets the road.”

Fitz says that while the Ison’s case involves a large quantity of illegally disposed material, such dumping is by no means rare. Wildlife Division technicians are all too frequently called upon to clean up trash that people toss along roadways bisecting wildlife areas, Fitz says.

“Usually it’s household goods and general trash, and we do investigate them all,” Fitz said. “But the issue can be a real problem at some of our wildlife areas.”

Welsh said also the problem seems to become more acute toward cities and larger communities where people are less inclined to drive some distance to a rural enclave to illegally dispose of their trash and junk.

“But this was the worst case I’ve seen in 10 to 15 years; it’s magnitude was huge,” Welsh said.

To help thwart illegal dumping the Wildlife Division works closely with its local and state law enforcement and environmental counterparts, Fitz said.

The agency also utilizes various strategies designed to record, investigate and ultimately capture those individuals engaged in such criminal activity, Fitz says as well.

“Our officers have made some really good cases,” Fitz said. 

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
JFrischk4@Gmail.com