DaytonDailyNews.com

DAYTON — While Perma-Fix Environmental Services gave the Environmental Quality Co. an option to purchase its Dayton facility in May, Perma-Fix is still shopping the facility around, the company's chief executive said last week.

In late May, Perma-Fix signed a letter of intent to sell its industrial segment to Environmental Quality, or EQ. The deal includes the sale of five Perma-Fix facilities and an option on the Dayton facility.

" 'Option' is too strong a word," Louis Centofanti said when asked about the deal with EQ last week. "It has been softened dramatically."

"We started to shop it (the Dayton facility) more heavily," Centofanti said.

Centofanti declined to talk in detail about interest in the Jefferson Twp. plant, but he said a "regional player" might be a "natural buyer" for the plant.

Robert Doyle, an EQ spokesman, said Tuesday his company is not actively pursuing the facility.

The plant primarily recycles used motor oil. In May 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency joined a lawsuit against Perma-Fix filed by a citizens group concerned with the facility's compliance with the Clean Air Act. Centofanti also said last week that his company is approaching resolution with the citizens group and the EPA.

"I think we can say that we're making progress." said Ellis Jacobs, an attorney for Citizens for the Responsible Destruction of Chemical Weapons and one of the attorneys for Barbara Fisher, a Jefferson Twp. resident who sued Perma-Fix.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDaily

News.com.