Millions of pounds of CRT devices abandoned by Utah’s Stone Castle Recycling continue to plague local communities.
According to a pair of articles appearing April 5 in the Salt Lake Tribune, six former locations of Stone Castle remain piled high with CRT devices. Company CEO Anthony Stoddard “has not paid for any of his defunct recycling centers or their cleanup,” the newspaper states.
Stone Castle closed in 2014 following a string of fires that were examined as potential cases of arson.
A year ago the Basel Action Network issued a blistering report on the state of Stone Castle.
According to Andy Renfro, the owner of a warehouse space leased to Stone Castle in Clearfield, Utah, approximately “3.5 million pounds of television glass” remains stored there. The cost to get the material recycled, Renfro told the paper, is likely $500,000.
Thus far, only one Stone Castle site, located in Parowan, has been cleaned out. EPA Region 8 federal on-scene coordinator Steven Merritt confirmed with E-Scrap News “all the disposal of all treated wastes was finished in January.” According to Merritt, the rest of the sites are currently being handled by Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality.
And who will pay for cleaning out the sites? “There is no simple answer,” Scott Anderson, the director of the Utah Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste, told the Salt Lake Tribune.
“I don’t have a pot of emergency-response money,” Anderson stated. “That’s not how I’m budgeted.”
One of Stone Castle’s largest upstream suppliers of glass, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its Deseret Industries thrift store chain, has stated Stone Castle “guaranteed the material would be recycled properly” and thus far has resisted calls by BAN to help fund the cleanup process.