Written by For decades, the citizens of Galion have lived at the epicenter of a compounding environmental disaster.
The escalatoin of EPA involvement and tangible action has been escalated rapidly in 2026.
The timeline of municipal neglect stretches back to the early 1970’s & 1980s, when Harvard University and Boston University educated researcher Dr. Ingalls formally investigated the Fairview Avenue Multiple Sclerosis cluster, linking the neurodegenerative outbreak to industrial heavy metals like cadmium and hexavalent chromium. Dr. Theodore H. Ingalls specialized in epidemiology and preventive medicine. State officials lost the study data compiled by Ingalls, expanded the geographical scope into neighboring townships which diluted the study which sparked a decades long battle against “statistical dilution”.
Despite these historical studies and dire epidemiological warnings, the city’s infrastructure has been allowed to catastrophically decay.
The consequences of this decay are now a matter of public record, most of which is available in our reporting on marionwatch.com/galioncitywatch.
Between January and March of 2025, the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (PERRP) issued eight major safety citations to the Galion Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) for lethal chlorine gas hazards and raw sewage bioaerosol exposures. Just a month later, the failing facility bypassed over 200 million gallons of partially treated sewage.
Now, newly obtained documents prove that these extreme safety violations and massive bypasses are the direct result of a total regulatory collapse. Under federal environmental regulations, if an industrial facility possesses a reasonable potential to adversely affect a municipal treatment plant’s operations, it must be officially permitted and stringently monitored. However, according to an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA) Pretreatment Audit transmitted on August 14, 2026, the City of Galion has completely abandoned this regulatory mandate.
THE “THREE FACILITY” MYTH AND THE SURVEILLANCE GAP?
The audit exposes what can only be described as the “Three Facility” myth.
Currently, the city officially recognizes only three Significant Industrial Users (SIUs) within its jurisdiction: Carter Machine Co., Galion, LLC, and A&G Manufacturing. Yet, heavy-machining operations are functioning at full capacity across the city. By failing to conduct mandatory in-person follow-ups on Industrial Waste Surveys, the city has manufactured a convenient blind spot, leaving multiple facilities with an obvious “reasonable potential” for environmental contamination to operate completely unmonitored.
The city mailed Industrial Waste Surveys (IWS) in January 2025 and March 2026 to update their inventory but failed to follow up in person with industrial users that either did not respond or provided inadequate information.
SIU status is not just based on discharge of dangerous chemicals, it is defined by the reasonable potential for environmental contamination.
Regional surveillance indicates many more potential Categorical Industrial facilities are currently operating at full capacity than are officially monitored or permitted by the EPA.
Because the city only recognizes three facilities, with lax enforcement, the true volume, concentration, and chemical diversity of the toxic load entering the municipal grid is completely unquantified.
SYSTEMIC ADMINISTRATIVE AND MONITORING COLLAPSE
Even for the three facilities the city does acknowledge, the regulatory framework has entirely collapsed. State auditors discovered that the city has not sampled its Categorical Industrial Users since 2022, and physical inspections have not occurred in an indeterminate amount of time.
Throughout 2025, 100% of the city’s officially recognized SIUs went completely without municipal sampling or inspection.
The city officially “lost” the permit renewal application for Galion, LLC (submitted in May 2022), allowing the heavy manufacturer to operate unpermitted since February 2022. Records indicate that this is a federal goverment regulated small arms ammunition facility which makes this even more alarming.
A&G Manufacturing has been operating without an active permit since June 22, 2025.
When Galion, LLC triggered a zinc violation in January 2026, the legally required 30-day resampling protocol was never conducted by the city.
THE 1990 ORDINANCE: A PAPERWORK SHIELD
These enforcement failures are shielded by dangerously outdated local legislation.
The EPA noted that the city is currently operating under a Sewer Use Ordinance (SUO) that has remained largely untouched since 1990, omitting critical 2005 federal General Pretreatment Regulations.
This outdated code functions as a paperwork loophole, legally shielding the city from federal requirements that would force them to expose non-compliant industrial polluters.
The 36-year-old ordinance incorrectly lists the allowable local discharge limit for toxic copper at 3.2 mg/L—a staggering figure that is nearly five times higher than the legally approved limit of 0.652 mg/L.
Because the local code lacks an updated definitions for pollutant controls, the city has successfully avoided publishing the names of non-compliant industrial polluters in the local newspaper, as federal law otherwise requires.
The ordinance completely lacks requirements for slug load controls in local permits, failing to protect the wastewater plant from sudden, massive industrial chemical dumps.
| Material | Concentration (mg/l) |
| Arsenic | 0.259 |
| Cadmium | 0.242 |
| Chromium (Total) | 2.77 |
| Chromium (Hexavalent) | 0.369 |
| Copper | 3.2 |
| Cyanide | 1.2, or BMP |
| Lead | 0.7 |
| Mercury | 0.0006, or BMP |
| Molybdenum | 1.5 |
| Nickel | 2.592 |
| Selenium | 0.398 |
| Silver | 0.43, or BMP |
| Zinc | 2.61 |
THE DOWNSTREAM VULNERABILITY: THE AUGUST 12 AMANN RESERVOIR MANDATE
This unmonitored influx of heavy metals and industrial waste severely threatens a subterranean grid already buckling under pressure. Just two days prior to the pretreatment audit, on August 12, 2026, the Ohio EPA issued a conditional Plan Approval directly to the City of Galion regarding raw water infrastructure. The document details plans for the Intake Pump Station at Amann Reservoir (Project DDAGW-6896).
While the state approved the engineering plans, regulators attached strict constraints and explicit legal warnings regarding the city’s ongoing compliance issues.
The EPA mandated strict chemical constraints on the new pump station, dictating that lead solder and flux must not exceed 0.2 percent lead content, and any pipe or pipe fitting must not exceed 0.25 percent lead content.
The state enforced a strict expiration window, rendering the approval void if the facilities are not constructed by August 12, 2031.
In a pointed legal disclaimer, the EPA explicitly warned the city that this approval “shall not be considered or construed as extending or having any effect whatsoever on any compliance schedule or deadline set forth in any administrative or court order issued to or binding upon the applicant”.
THE CUMULATIVE COST OF COMPLIANCE LOOPHOLES
When a municipality fails to monitor industrial hazards at the source, those toxins inevitably exfiltrate through an aging, $41.63 million failing sewer grid. The convergence of the historical Harvard epidemiological studies, the 2025 PERRP worker safety violations, and the 48 permit effluent violations documented by the Ohio EPA in July 2026 paints a damning picture.
The juxtaposition of these two recent EPA documents—one confirming the unchecked flow of industrial waste into the city’s plumbing, and the other highlighting the fragile state of the Amann Reservoir drinking water intake—proves that the regulatory agencies protecting Galion’s infrastructure has failed.
While state regulators actively coach city officials on utilizing administrative loopholes to erase their Significant Non-Compliance status, and fail to flag out of date ordinances early, the citizens are left to bear the physical, environmental, and financial cost.