Steve Marcinko, the downstream neighbor of the $3 million under-construction county soccer complex on Blalock Road, has complained to Cherokee County Sheriff Roger Garrison and District Attorney Garry Moss about what he calls “serious illegal activities” that occurred on the soccer field site in the past. Marcinko has vigorously audited the activities at the soccer complex site and the adjacent, now closed, Blalock Road Landfill for the past 25 years, at one time suing the county for landfill regulatory compliance issues.
Marcinko said the leftover recycled vegetative debris the county is mulching and storing on the site with an inert landfill permit, which was recently required by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD), is the result of “a multi-million dollar racket” being operated on county property.
“Simply put – a clever scam netted millions for a private company that illegally collected fees for dumping trash on public property,” Marcinko said in the complaint. “And now the taxpayers are paying to clean it up.”
Sheriff Roger Garrison said Aug. 18 that he is reviewing the complaint to see if there is anything in it that would warrant an open investigation.
“We’re taking it as an official complaint,” Garrison said. “It is being handled routinely. It will be very difficult because of the 25-year-span of time, and there have been at least two complete rollovers of the Board of Commissioners since the landfill was closed.”
Marcinko has contended since the mulch was found early last year that it was left on site primarily by private recycler Jimmy Bobo.
Marcinko claims Bobo dumped vegetative debris under the guise that the material would be recycled and removed from county property he operated on. The area reportedly has been used as a dumping ground for decades by local residents, but the EPD has also identified Bobo as the “responsible party.” Bobo moved his business off the site, using a county-backed $18 million in industrial development bonds, so the county could build soccer fields. The soccer fields are due to be completed next month.
Garrison said that during his investigation of the complaint, Bobo would be contacted. “Certainly… he’s obviously the focus of that property, since he is the one that leased the property from the county,” he said.
Bobo’s attorney Doug Flint said Aug. 19 that there is less mulch at the soccer site now than there was when Bobo arrived on the scene, and he has proof Bobo took more recycling off the site than he took in.
When Bobo moved in, Flint said, there was mulch already present from three different places: a large pile left by a previous recycler; wood debris from site clearing; and mulch that was previously on land between Bobo and the soccer site that had been left there by county citizens who used the area to dump yard waste. Flint said the county asked Bobo to move the mulch left by others to his site because Marcinko complained.
Bobo told the Ledger-News Aug. 19 that Marcinko’s comments were “frustrating.”
“I am having a hard time thinking up anything nice to say about Steve and his vendetta; so, I suppose I should just do as my folks taught me and say nothing at all,” Bobo said.
Marcinko complains that “the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners and county management knew that fraudulent activity was allegedly going on at the site, but did nothing to stop it. In fact, they enabled it, ” he said, referring to past Boards of Commissioners.
Marcinko claims the debris on the site equals tipping fees in excess of $5 million. He said that current county officials have “failed to report” what went on at the site to the proper authorities.
“Considering the fraud and illegal activities that are known to have occurred ... your review of this matter for possible investigation or your consideration of a presentation of this matter before a grand jury is prudent,” his complaint says.
County Commission Chairman Buzz Ahrens said that Marcinko’s complaint is not new.
“Marcinko sued the county more than 10 years ago, mostly related to erosion issues and downstream impact ... for several years he has accused the county of allowing a ‘crime’ to be committed by leaving inert materials on county property without a landfill permit,” Ahrens said.
Ahrens also said Marcinko wants greenspace on the property, not a soccer complex.
In December 2009, the county commission approved a $700,000 change order for F.E. Sims Construction Company to implement an EPD-required corrective action plan at the 17-field soccer site, resulting from the discovery during soccer field construction of the large amounts of mulch left on the site.
A county-contracted study of the site earlier this year estimated as much as 218,775 cubic yards. The county applied for a landfill permit so that some of the mulch (which is not dangerous as it is made from old trees, etc.) that can’t be used to build the soccer fields can be stored onsite.
The county is referring to the matter of handling the mulch as “potential litigation.”
“The county continues to discuss with relevant parties financial, legal and practical resolutions to some very complex issues spanning more than 10 years,” Ahrens said.
“As many residents know, going back to the early 1990s, and perhaps earlier, the Blalock Road site across from the now-closed garbage dump was used as a place for county residents to bring cut wood, stumps, branches and brush,” Ahrens said. Ahrens said, in the late 1990s, the contract with Bobo allowed larger quantities of wood waste to be processed and recycled at the site.
“Thus, the presence of inert materials on the site during the recycling operations was expressly intended and consistent with the use of the property as a public recycling facility. Recycling operations are required by the EPD to remove processed materials from the site on a regular schedule,” Ahrens said.
Ahrens said the inert landfill permit would limit the county from constructing buildings or parking lots on the areas where mulch remains underground, but that is not a factor in the soccer field construction.
“We will use it as greenspace,” he said. “The county has not concealed the fact that its current construction contractor discovered a significant amount of wood mulch that may have been left buried on the site by one or more previous operations there.
Ahrens said the county is working to recover the cost, to the extent it can clearly establish “which of the past operators on the site might be responsible for certain site conditions” as well as a volume estimate of materials that might already have been on site when private operators began their operations.
