An Anne Arundel County man was sentenced to five years behind bars for dumping and abandoning over 250,000 scrap tires in Allegany, the state attorney general announced Wednesday.

Michael Osei, 48, was ordered to pay $250,000 in restitution to the Allegany County commissioners and a $300,000 fine to the Maryland Clean Water Fund. He pleaded guilty to 17 environmental charges in October.

Osei, who lives in Hanover, was charged with “one count of unlawful disposal for gain, eight counts of operating a scrap tire facility without a license, and eight counts of improper handling of waste—nuisance.”

Scrap tires are worn and damaged tires. When piled together, the Environmental Protection Agency says they can pose two health and environmental threats: rodents carrying diseases breeding there, and fires that can burn for a long time and are hard to put out.

According to the news release, an investigation was led by the attorney general’s Environmental and Natural Resources Crimes Unit, the state Department of the Environment and the Office of the State Fire Marshal. Officials found that Osei received a land-lease for an industrial plot that bordered the Potomac River to operate a scrap tire recycling facility from the Allegany County economic development office in June 2021.

By July of that year, Osei and his employees began operating the facility, collecting over 100,000 scrap tires from nearby West Virginia to take to the lot he received from the county, which was on Westernport Road.

Maryland Department of Environment inspectors became aware of the property in October 2021 and documented between 10,000 and 15,000 scraps at that time. They alerted the state fire marshal since the tires being uncovered and outdoors posed a fire risk.

Both the fire marshal and environment department ordered Osei to stop operations between fall 2021 and spring 2022, the news release said.

By fall 2022, investigators say Osei had abandoned the site with over 250,000 scrap tires.