DeWine’s role in pipeline fines questioned

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Betty Sutton wants the Ohio Ethics Commission to investigate if Attorney General Mike DeWine’s personal finances are influencing his approach to recovering $2.3 million in fines from Rover Pipeline.

But DeWine’s office said that any potential financial conflict was resolved in the spring.

Sutton, a former congresswoman, is criticizing DeWine for not acting more quickly against Rover, which is building a $4.2 billion, 710-mile underground natural gas pipeline that intersects Ohio. She points to his most recent financial disclosure statement, which shows he has a financial interest in Rover’s parent company, Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners.

“The continued failure to act to enforce these fines encourages further violations,” Sutton said in a statement Thursday that accompanied a letter sent to the Ohio Ethics Commission. “DeWine’s personal investment in the company calls into question why he has been silent and unresponsive to Ohio residents’ safety concerns and should be investigated.”

Dan Tierney, spokesman for DeWine, said the attorney general divested himself of Energy Transfer Partners in May, two months before the first referral was made by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for his office to hold Rover responsible for $2.3 million in fines that occurred during construction of the pipeline.

DeWine’s financial disclosure statement, which covers 2016 activity, lists Energy Transfer Partners six times for capital gains, dividend, interest, income, net rent and royalties.

Even before the referrals, Tierney said, there was media coverage of the problems with the pipeline: “As a result of what he saw, this was not a company he wanted to be invested in.”

The referral from the Ohio EPA, which first occurred in July and was modified in mid-September, is “a fairly routine matter proceeding in a very routine fashion on a very routine timeline,” Tierney said.

The attorney general’s office environmental enforcement section, he said, was engaged in settlement negotiations with Rover. That, Tierney said, is normal in environmental referrals prior to deciding whether to file litigation.

“We should be able to provide an update in the near future,” Tierney said, adding that whatever happens, it won’t be a result of Sutton’s inquiry.

As of Sept. 20, when the state EPA said it referred the fines to the attorney general, the Rover project had compiled 104 noncompliance incidents.

In Ohio, the pipeline razed a historic house, leaked 2 million gallons of drilling sludge into protected wetlands and dumped contaminated slurry in quarries near water wells used by the Canton Water Department and Aqua Ohio. In late September, the Ohio EPA cited Rover again, this time for spilling soapy wastewater and sediment into an eastern Ohio stream.