COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Sentencing has been delayed for a former owner of a Youngstown-based wastewater company who’s pleaded guilty to federal Clean Water Act violations.
Sixty-three-year-old Ben Lupo, of Poland, Ohio, is now scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 5.
Lupo is charged in the dumping of thousands of gallons of fracking wastewater into a northeast Ohio storm sewer. He faces up to three years in prison, a year of supervised release and fines of as much as $250,000.
Prosecutors say Lupo ordered an employee at Hardrock Excavating LLC to repeatedly dump drilling mud and brine intended for deep injection into a sewer emptying into the Mahoning River watershed, or dumped the material himself, between November 2012 and January 2013.
The employee, 34-year-old Michael Guesman of Cortland, was sentenced to community service and probation.
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