“Many of Ohio’s local communities use alum to treat drinking water and waste water,” DeWine said. “We need information from local governments that have purchased alum to determine if they got a fair price or if the market was manipulated.”
Alum, or aluminum sulfate, is used to treat both waste water and drinking water. The city of Dayton said that neither of its plants use alum, so it would not have purchased the chemical.
DeWine said three executives of chemical manufacturing companies have been indicted in federal court in New Jersey for their alleged roles in a scheme to reduce competition in sales of alum. He added that the alleged scheme involved competitors agreeing among themselves who would win a bid or who would submit the lowest bid.
In October, the Justice Department said a former executive of a water treatment chemicals manufacturer, Frank A. Reichl, pleaded guilty for his role in a conspiracy to eliminate competition by fixing prices, rigging bids and allocating customers for liquid aluminum sulfate supplied to municipalities and pulp and paper companies.
Reichl has been identified in news reports as a former executive of General Chemical Corp.
In December, the city of Duluth, Minn., joined a class-action lawsuit alleging that it was overcharged by suppliers who rigged bids and colluded to fix prices, according to the Duluth News Tribune.
In February, two others, Vincent J. Opalewski and Brian Steppig, were indicted in U.S. District Court in New Jersey. In an executive profile posted on Bloomberg.com, Opalewski is identified as an executive at General Chemical, GenTek Inc.
Steppig’s LinkedIn profile describes him as Director of Sales and Marketing at GEO Specialty Chemicals.
DeWine asked that municipalities and other public entities contact the Ohio Attorney General’s Antitrust Section at (614) 466-4328 or Alum_Investigation@OhioAttorneyGeneral.gov to learn more about the investigation and to provide information about their aluminum sulfate or ferric acid purchases.
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