United States Ceramic Tile wants to join East Sparta

By Malcolm Hall
The Canton Repository

EAST SPARTA - This village stands to nearly double in size with the proposed annexation of the 761.8-acre United States Ceramic Tile property from Pike Township.

A petition to have the site annexed into East Sparta was filed Tuesday with Stark County commissioners. The company is seeking annexation to East Sparta to maintain the property as industrial — contrary to what township officials want.

“They approached the village,” Mayor Jacqueline Truax said. “It was their decision. They came to the village and asked if we would be willing to annex them. And we said we would.”...Read more.

River cleanup costs $62 million

The Canton Repository

ASHTABULA - A river that was nearly declared a U.S. EPA Superfund site is being dredged at a cost of $62 million, which could make the toxic waterway swimmable in five years.

Giant sluglike sacks are filling up outside Ashtabula Harbor, holding in their bulging bellies the toxic dregs of past industrial decades.

The Ashtabula River, about 50 miles northeast of Cleveland, has long been considered among the most polluted sites along the Lake Erie shore. It hasn't been dredged since 1962.

In the subsequent 45 years, its bottom was soiled by cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls, low-level radioactive materials, heavy metals, and oil and grease from chemical plants and other heavy industry that has since scaled back, cleaned up or simply shut down and left the economically depressed area....Read more.

Cleaner skies could mean more landfills

By Anna Jo Bratton
The Associated Press

OMAHA, NE - As the nation's coal-fired power plants work to create cleaner skies, they'll likely fill up landfills with millions more tons of potentially harmful ash.

More than one-third of the ash generated at the country's hundreds of coal-fired plants is now recycled - mixed with cement to build highways or used to stabilize embankments, among other things.

But in a process being used increasingly across the nation, chemicals are injected into plants' emissions to capture airborne pollutants....Read more.