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Federal and state agencies searched the downtown Warren headquarters of Kleese Development Associates and a company site in Vienna on Tuesday, according to an official with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
KDA is involved in the oil and gas drilling industry and operates one of its injection well sites on Sodom Hutchings Road.
Heidi Griesmer, chief of the Ohio EPA public interest center, said the state agency participated in the search as part of the Northeast Ohio Environmental Crimes Task Force.
However, she could not say what investigators were looking for or if they took any items. She also was not clear on which of KDA’s multiple Vienna facilities were searched.
The Ohio Bureau of Investigation, an arm of Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s Office, assisted the task force, according to DeWine spokeswoman Kate Hanson. She, too, could not provide details on the searches.
Mike Tobin, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cleveland, which is also part of the task force, declined to comment.
An attempt to reach Matt Kleese, vice president of operations for the company, was not successful.
According to the company’s website, it has a field office on Warren Sharon Road in Vienna, and its headquarters is on West Market Street.
The company recently has been at the center of an investigation to determine what caused a chemical spill near the Kleese Surface Facility, which is connected to five saltwater injection wells on Sodom Hutchings Road.
On April 3, Richard J. Simmers, chief of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, ordered operations to stop at the Vienna facility after the chemical spill was discovered.
State inspectors responding to a Sodom Hutchings Road resident’s complaint reported tracing the spill “back to an area near” the facility and determined it likely was related to operations there, according to Simmers’ order.
Simmers found KDA in violation of several sections of the Ohio Administrative Code addressing polluting the environment and ordered operations of the five injection wells at the facility to stop. Operations at the Kleese facility in Vienna have remained dormant.
Eric Heis, ODNR spokesman, said the investigation into the chemical spill is ongoing.
While that investigation continues, ODNR is allowing two of the company’s injection wells in Warren Township that had been ordered shut down last week to resume operations.
A state inspector was checking the Warren Township site off U.S. Route 422 on Thursday when he found the wells were injecting wastewater at a higher pressure than allowed, Heis said.
KDA was then instructed to correct the issue. The inspector returned Friday to find that the problem had not been fixed and he instructed the well operator to cease operations.
When the inspector returned on Saturday, KDA had installed an automatic shut-off switch and a pressure level recorder, which brought the well into compliance, and operations were permitted to resume.
A KDA spokesman told Tribune Chronicle newspartner WYTV 33 News that the company complied within hours of the request at Warren Township site and was in the process of voluntarily adding the equipment at its wells in Vienna.