A southwest Ohio resident’s backyard has been an illegal dumping ground for nearly a decade.

Back in 2016, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency ordered Donald Combs to remove the more than 500,000 cubic yards of scrap waste on his property. But, the Clermont County resident didn’t comply. His case went into lengthy litigation that resulted in prison time and a fine of $1.4 million dollars.

In May, Combs filed for bankruptcy. Ohio EPA Director Anne Vogel said that has cleared the way for the state agency and community partners to begin the work of clearing the debris from the Goshen Township dump site.

“We have great regulations and programs in Ohio to make sure that waste is disposed of properly,” Vogel said. “And this is not how it’s done.”

More than an eyesore

Goshen Township, Clermont County Commissioners, the county prosecutor’s office and health department have all spent years attempting to rid the community of the illegal dump site.

Vogel said it’s more than just an eyesore to the community. It could potentially endanger the other residents of Goshen Township.

“When you have [trash] just being dumped in the backyard, it attracts rodents. It could leach into the soil and the groundwater if there’s any fuel or something of that nature. It attracts mosquitoes which can become dangerous to the community,” Vogel said.

Especially since the site doesn’t abide by the safety regulations of the EPA. Vogel said there isn’t hazardous material on the property, but the sheer size of the dump site made this case a high priority for the Ohio EPA.

“This is not a backyard where you’re throwing your household waste out. This is about three acres of demolition debris,” Vogel said.

A statewide issue

Clermont County is far from the only place in Ohio that has to deal with illegal dumpers.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources recently cleaned up a dump site full of scrap tires in northeast Ohio. And the Ohio Attorney General’s office recently fined a landscape business owner for illegally dumping near the Little Miami River. Vogel said it’s unfortunately a problem that Ohio needs to work to improve.

“Believe it or not, people dump scrap tires into rivers, for some reason, into our most precious natural resource,” Vogel said.

Last year, the Ohio Attorney General launched a campaign called “Shine a Light on Illegal Dumpers” to crack down on these instances. And Vogel said the Ohio EPA has recently launched its own educational campaign to cut down on waste and end illegal dumping.

“For example, an auto repair shop or a tire shop where people might be turning in their scrap tires, teaching those folks how to properly dispose of them so that we don’t create these streams of waste,” Vogel said. “We need to get in front of it because it is a problem in Ohio.”

Vogel said the cleanup of Clermont County’s dump site is a big win for the state – and one that will make a difference for a community long plagued by the trash pile.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Backers of a proposal to change Ohio’s troubled political mapmaking system delivered hundreds of thousands of signatures on Monday as they work to qualify for the statewide ballot this fall.

Citizens Not Politicians dropped off more than 700,000 petition signatures to Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office in downtown Columbus, according to Jen Miller, director of League of Women Voters. LaRose now will work with local election boards to determine that at least 413,446 signatures are valid, which would get the proposal onto the Nov. 5 ballot.

The group’s amendment aims to replace the current Ohio Redistricting Commission, made up of three statewide officeholders and four state lawmakers, with an independent body selected directly by citizens. The new panel’s members would be diversified by party affiliation and geography.

Their effort to make the ballot was plagued by early delays. Republican Attorney General Dave Yost raised two rounds of objections to their petition language before the wording was initially certified. Then, after the Ohio Ballot Board unanimously cleared the measure in October 2023, organizers were forced to resubmit their petitions due to a single-digit typo in a date.

“It’s just a great day for Ohio and Ohio’s democracy,” Miller said. “Citizens across the state came together to make sure we could get on the ballot this fall and finally end gerrymandering.”

The effort follows the existing structure’s repeated failure to produce constitutional maps. During the protracted process for redrawing district boundaries to account for the results of the 2020 Census, challenges filed in court resulted in two congressional maps and five sets of Statehouse maps being rejected as unconstitutionally gerrymandered.

A month after the ballot campaign was announced, the bipartisan Ohio Redistricting Commission voted unanimously to approve new Statehouse maps, with minority Democrats conceding to “better, fairer” maps that nonetheless continued to deliver the state’s ruling Republicans a robust political advantage.

That same September, congressional district maps favoring Republicans were put in place, too, after the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed a group of legal challenges at the request of the voting rights groups that had brought them. The groups told the court that continuing to pursue the lawsuits against the GOP-drawn maps brought turmoil not in the best interests of Ohio voters.

The Ohio State Buckeyes have landed four-star recruit Dorian Jones, a source told 247 Sports.

Jones will be staying local with his decision to join the Buckeyes.

The 6-foot-4 shooting guard played his high-school basketball at Richmond Heights and was the No. 2-ranked player in Ohio.

“They were the first program to start recruiting me when I was a freshman,” Jones recently said of Ohio State. “They have been there since day one. They talk about building their program around me.”

Jones also had offers from the likes of Syracuse, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and Michigan, but ultimately chose to stay home.

The Buckeyes are trying to recover after missing the NCAA Tournament each of the last two years.

Ohio State got off to a 14-11 start this past season, resulting in the firing of head coach Chris Holtmann. Jake Diebler took the reins the rest of the way and went a respectable 8-3.

It certainly represented a better campaign for the Buckeyes than 2022-23, when they went just 16-19. That marks Ohio State’s only losing record since going 14-16 in 2003-04.

Since 2006, the Buckeyes have made the Big Dance 13 times, with their deepest run coming in 2011-12 when Jared Sullinger led the squad all the way to the Final Four before losing to Kansas.

Ohio State has not made it past the second round of the NCAA Tournament in any of its last four appearances.

We’ll see if Jones and a potentially tantalizing recruiting class overall can help bring Buckeyes basketball back to prominence.