CINCINNATI — Evans Landscaping owner Doug Evans agreed to pay a new $35,000 fine to settle a years-long fight with Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost over environmental cleanup.
Yost sued Evans in 2021, accusing him of open dumping and illegal disposal of construction and demolition debris at three facilities in Anderson Township since at least 2014.
Inspectors cited “recurring problems” with buried waste, open dumping, scrap tires, illegal disposal of construction and demolition debris, and leachate runoff, at times into the Little Miami River.
Evans paid a $550,000 fine to settle the lawsuit in 2022. He also agreed to a cleanup plan that included digging out and removing waste on his Broadwell Road site, monitoring groundwater at his Round Bottom Road facility, and building a cap over areas where debris was illegally disposed of on Mount Carmel Road.
However, authorities say the cleanup didn’t occur as planned.
WATCH: Breaking down the years-long fight between Evans and Yost
“He thumbed his nose at the entire process. He thumbed his nose at the community. He thumbed his nose at the court. We’re done,” Yost said in August 2023. “We're not going to be OK with him just flipping off the court and not complying with the order.”
In August 2023, Yost filed a contempt motion against Evans, asking a judge to put him in jail for 30 days for violating a court order to clean up the sites.
A month later, Yost’s office withdrew the contempt charges after Evans produced proof that he was actively cleaning up illegal pollution. But the legal saga continued for two additional years.
Evans, 63, is a well-known entrepreneur on the east side who built a landscaping empire from a high school job hauling mulch from a pickup truck. He now employs 250 at operations that range from sand and gravel, equipment rental, snow removal, soil and firewood, ready-mix concrete, tree services, and stone works.
The part of Evans’ business that health inspectors have repeatedly targeted is the recycling of construction and demolition debris operation.
Both sides were back in court in November 2023, fighting about how to clean up the thousands of truckloads of construction waste buried at the Broadwell Road facility. Health officials called the site an illegal landfill.
But health officials showed no signs of letting up on Evans. The Ohio EPA and Hamilton County Public Health issued new violations, including one in November 2023, after discovering a milky white substance with an objectionable odor being discharged into the Little Miami River at his Round Bottom Road headquarters.
Authorities continued to accuse Evans of not following the judge’s cleanup order.
Yost filed more contempt motions in 2024 and again asked the judge to jail Evans and fine him. But the judge again sided with Evans and declined to make findings of willful noncompliance or contempt in February 2025.
Then state prosecutors appealed to the Ohio 1st District Court of Appeals, which was set to hear the case in 2026.
Instead of going back to the courtroom, both sides reached a new agreement on Dec. 11, 2025.
“Rather than spend our money defending the appeal, we agreed with the state on the work to be performed at the property and to pay a penalty to the state to resolve the dispute,” Evans said in a statement to the WCPO 9 I-Team.
Both sides agreed that Evans would pay $140,000 to resolve the state’s accusations. But that fine was reduced to $35,000 after Evans met “performance incentives” related to the construction of a cap over buried construction debris at his Mount Carmel Road facility.
“Evans Landscaping promptly completed the required work at the property, consisting of the placement of an asphalt cap over fill material. The state alleged that the fill material contained unauthorized construction and demolition debris (C&DD), which was disputed by Evans Landscaping. We continue to believe that the property never posed a risk to human health or the environment, and the cap was unnecessary and unfairly imposed on Evans Landscaping,” Evans said.
Spokespersons for Hamilton County Public Health and the Ohio EPA say they will continue to monitor Evans’ facilities.
County health inspectors issued a new violation in October at his Broadwell Road facility for uncovered stockpiles of waste material. A spokesperson said that it has been cleaned up.
This is the latest in a long string of legal battles for Evans.
In 2014, Evans agreed to pay $300,000 in fines to settle a complaint with the Ohio EPA over air pollution violations. He also agreed to a $100,000 tree-planting project to serve as a natural windbreak for dust and emissions from his stonework, gravel, and sand operations in Hamilton and Clermont counties.
In an unrelated case, the FBI began investigating Evans in 2013 for minority contracting fraud. Evans insisted that he was innocent, but a jury convicted him in 2018 of using a shell company to win millions in state and government demolition contracts during the recession that were meant for minority and small businesses.
Evans served six months in prison, followed by several months of house arrest.
Then, in July 2025, a Clermont County judge ordered Evans to pay nearly $900,000 in damages and penalties to end a five-year legal dispute with a neighbor, after he stripped thousands of trees to build a commercial park while enjoying a tax break and zoning exemptions meant for working farmers.
