VIENNA – A local company connected to a chemical spill earlier this year has until the end of this week to submit a remediation plan to state officials for the clean up of a local creek.

A spokesman for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday that the investigation into the chemical spill is ongoing.

Matt Kleese, former vice president of operations for Warren-based Kleese Development Associates, also known has KDA, said he is confident the company is doing “the best possible job” to resolve the matter and work with state officials.

Kleese declined to comment on the matter further, he said, because he recently left the company to pursue his own business. Attempts by the Tribune Chronicle to reach someone at KDA’s office in Warren were not successful.

Cleanup efforts have been onging since shortly after the spill, the company has said.

KDA is involved in the oil and gas drilling industry and operates one of its injection well sites on Sodom Hutchings Road. The company 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 Resource’s Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, ordered operations to stop at the Vienna facility after a chemical spill was discovered in late March.

State inspectors responding to a Vienna resident’s complaint reported tracing the spill “back to an area near” the KDA 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 there have remained dormant and are under the oversight of the ODNR.

On April 28, the Northeast Ohio Environmental Crimes Task Force searched KDA’s downtown Warren headquarters and a company site in Vienna. However, officials have not said what investigators were looking for or if they collected anything at that time.