New Lorain Water Plant superintendent Dan McGannon stands Thursday with the Lorain Water Treatment plant in the background. (CT photo by Chuck Humel)

LORAIN – Many Americans take clean water for granted, but after 31 years of helping to provide it, Dan McGannon knows better.

Four months after he was hired in the wake of a water contamination screw-up, McGannon, Lorain’s water purification plant superintendent, is implementing an ambitious agenda to keep clean water flowing to residents.

Since he began work April 18, McGannon has had sediment, known as sludge, trucked to a landfill rather than letting it flow to the city’s wastewater treatment plant, where it clogged up filters. He plans to switch to liquid chlorine to treat water, which is safer than hydrogen chloride, and eventually switch to plastic pipes, which last longer than iron ones.

“It’s not an art. It’s a science,” McGannon said Thursday about the purification process. “Back in the old days it was an art, but today it’s a science. Everything we do from now on will be based on science.”

McGannon’s hiring was prompted by workers erroneously reading dosage rates on a pump leading to a chemical underfeed in the purification process, causing high turbidity, or cloudiness, in water on April 9 and 10, according to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. City officials said the water was flushed into sewers as a precautionary measure and never reached the public.

However, workers at the plant failed to promptly notify the EPA. James Miller, the acting assistant water plant superintendent, and Mark Petrie, lead operator for purification, both quit under pressure. McGannon, who is a Class 4 plant operator, a certification from the Ohio EPA that is hard to come by, was then hired.

Utilities Director Corey Timko, who hired McGannon, praised his communication and management skills in a July 9 interview.

“The employees are going to like that a whole bunch and you’re going to get buy-in,” Timko said. “We’re trying to make a cultural shift in the way things are managed down there.”

McGannon said the screw-up has led to more EPA scrutiny including a surprise inspection, which he is fine with.

“Our water is so clean now that it’s unbelievable and I think everybody that works here is afraid for it to be anything other than that,” he said. “Surprise inspections tell them (EPA inspectors) two things: whether you’re doing you’re job or not.”

The hiring was a homecoming for McGannon, 50, a Lorain resident who began his career in 1980 working at the plant, which can process up to 17.2 million gallons of water daily and averages about 13.7 million gallons processed daily. McGannon worked at the plant at 1106 W. First St. until 1991, when he was hired at the water plant in Berea.

The Lorain plant, which dates back to 1906 and has operated continuously since 1954, serves about 30,000 customers. It had some $12.4 million in renovations completed in 1999.

McGannon is hoping to pour more money into new equipment when city taxpayers can afford it – like an approximately $250,000 centrifuge to filter water out of the sludge.

The sludge hauling costs about $60,000 annually. Sludge bags, about 20 feet wide and 100 to 150 feet long, lie outside the plant.

“There’s a lot to do here,” McGannon said. “I’ve got a good crew and everybody seems positive about making some changes.”

Contact Evan Goodenow at 329-7129 or egoodenow@chroniclet.com.

ELYRIA – When she saw the screaming man in the street running after her car around 4 a.m. Sunday, April DeJesus panicked.

Attempting to escape, DeJesus said she tried to put her car in reverse and broke the handle off her gear shifter, leaving her car stuck as the man closed in near the intersection of Abbe Road and Cleveland Street.

Comrie

“He was screaming a bunch of stuff, but I was scared to death. I have no idea what he was saying,” DeJesus said Sunday evening. “I had an idea what he was going to do. Everything was locked up and I was panicking.”

DeJesus, a 38-year-old city resident, said she decided to make a run for it and headed to the Sunoco station at 645 Cleveland St. with the man in pursuit.

“I’m thinking, ‘I don’t care what happens to my car. I can’t move it,’ ” she said. “I’m just fearing for my life.”

The station clerk locked the doors when DeJesus made it inside and called police, according to an Elyria police report.

The man, identified by police as Steven Comrie, of Elyria, then ran away from the station and jumped into the passenger seat of a car driven by Christopher Taylor, according to the report. Taylor, who was stopped at the intersection of Cleveland Street and South Abbe Road, told police the man acted like he was carrying a pistol and ordered him to drive to the Speedway station at 905 E. Broad St. at South Abbe Road.

“The guy was just mumbling and kept screaming, ‘Are you paying attention?! Are you paying attention?! Are you paying attention?’ almost the whole ride,” Taylor said in an interview. “I couldn’t tell if he was making a threat or what was going on.”

Taylor, 29, of Elyria, said he drove to the FirstMerit Bank at South Abbe Road near the Speedway, where the man got out of the car then ran when he heard police sirens.

Police said they arrested Comrie without incident in the parking lot of the McDonald’s restaurant at 1010 E. Broad St. Comrie, 31, of the 100 block of Hawthorne Street, is known to police. He was charged with abduction and robbery.

He has an extensive criminal record including convictions for cocaine possession, resisting arrest and trespassing. Comrie is due in Elyria Municipal Court this morning and was being held at Lorain County Jail on Sunday night in lieu of a $20,000 bond.

DeJesus said she is confident Comrie will be found guilty and hopes he gets a long sentence.

“He was just out of control,” she said. “It was bad.”

Contact Evan Goodenow at 329-7129 or egoodenow@chroniclet.com.

ELYRIA — Holly Dembie was trying to escape from her knife-wielding husband when she plunged from a second-story bathroom window at her Cowley Road home in Grafton Township on Aug. 11, Lorain County Sheriff’s Sgt. Donald Barker testified Thursday.

The murder and domestic violence charges against William Dembie Jr. of Grafton Township, shown here in court on Thursday, have been forwarded to a county grand jury. (CT photo by Bruce Bishop.)

Already wounded from William Dembie Jr.’s combat knife, she doesn’t appear to have tried to flee after she landed in the backyard, Barker said during a hearing before Elyria Municipal Court Judge Lisa Locke Graves, who forwarded the murder and domestic violence charges that Dembie faces to a county grand jury.

After the fall, William Dembie, 42, went downstairs and stabbed his 33-year-old wife again, killing her, Barker testified.

When deputies arrived, they found Holly Dembie’s nude body where she had fallen and the knife nearby. She had knife wounds on her torso and neck, and the investigation has shown that she bled to death from the wounds to her throat area, Barker said.

William Dembie, who has since resigned from his job as a corrections officer at the Lorain County Jail, had called the Sheriff’s Office and told dispatcher Joy Sanchez that he had killed his wife, telling Sanchez he “just couldn’t deal with her (expletive) anymore.”

Barker said Dembie told him during an interview about two hours after the 1:30 a.m. call that he had waited for his wife to come home from a night out with friends to talk to her. He thought she would be more receptive to what he had to say after she had been drinking, Barker said.

The couple was upstairs in Holly Dembie’s room, Barker said William Dembie told him, when the conversation escalated into violence.

“She pushed him, he recoiled and punched her in the face,” Barker testified Dembie told him.

J. Anthony Rich, William Dembie’s defense attorney, argued Thursday that Holly Dembie was physically abusive toward her husband, whom he called a “classic battered male.”

After the punch, William Dembie said the couple went downstairs to clean up the wound, according to Barker. William Dembie told him that Holly Dembie then went back to her bedroom and he went to his room to get the knife, which he hoped would calm her down.

Barker testified that William Dembie said he then returned to his wife’s room to finish their conversation. When she refused to listen, he began stabbing her, Barker said Dembie told him.

Barker said it was unclear whether the stabbing began in the bedroom or the connected bathroom, but at some point a wounded Holly Dembie tried to climb out the chest-level bathroom window. He said William Dembie told him that he grabbed for her, and her pants — the only clothing she had on at the time — ripped off and she fell. Barker said it was unclear exactly when Holly Dembie’s shirt, which was found inside the house, came off.

“She fell out the window, and he went downstairs to finish her off,” Elyria City Prosecutor Scott Strait said later in the hearing as he argued against Rich’s request to reduce the $5 million bond on which William Dembie is being held at the Erie County Jail.

Dembie, wearing an orange prisoner uniform, kept his head bowed for much of the hearing, but he did talk with Rich several times. Rich at one point asked Barker to speak louder because Dembie is hearing-impaired and couldn’t hear what the deputy was saying.

Rich insisted that his client shouldn’t be facing a murder charge. He said it wasn’t disputed that that William Dembie killed his wife, but he argued that Dembie should have been charged with voluntary manslaughter because the killing took place when his client was in a sudden fit of passion or rage.

Although he didn’t elaborate, Rich said he has evidence that William Dembie endured years of physical and psychological abuse from his wife, who worked with special-needs children at Midview Schools.

William Dembie’s mother, Doris Dembie, and his sister, Sandra Dembie, echoed those comments after the hearing.

While they described William Dembie as a loving father and “kind-hearted” man, they said that Holly Dembie had a dark side.

After the hearing, Holly Dembie’s family scoffed at the allegations that she was abusive and insisted William Dembie was a physically violent man who neglected his family. Holly Dembie, they said, was the furthest thing from an abuser.

“Holly was sunshine,” her stepfather, Michael Foldes, said.

Her mother, Cheryl Foldes, said she had no doubt that Holly Dembie was prepared to jump from the window to escape her husband, whom she had planned to divorce.

“She jumped out the window to get the hell away from him,” Cheryl Foldes said.

The Foldeses also said they believe William Dembie came to their house, which is two doors down from the Dembie home, after killing his wife. The family wasn’t there at the time — Michael Foldes was at work and Cheryl Foldes had taken the Dembies’ 4-year-old son and other family members to a drive-in movie — but they said that when they arrived, the home’s lights were turned on all over the house, and only one light was on when they left.

Barker said deputies are still investigating what Dembie did after the killing.

When Dembie called in to report that his wife was dead, he said he was waiting in the kitchen for deputies and was unarmed. When deputies arrived, Barker has said, Dembie wasn’t in the house, but came forward when they called out for him.

He was wearing shorts and a shirt and was covered in blood, Barker said.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

SHEFFIELD TWP. — The Lorain County Board of Elections voted Thursday to forward its investigation into whether Lorain County Community Action Agency Director Robert Gilchrist has been voting in the wrong place for the past four elections to county prosecutors and the Ohio secretary of state’s Office.

Gilchrist

Jennifer Brunner, Gilchrist’s attorney, said she was surprised to learn anything had been done with the investigation. She said the elections board has never discussed the results of its probe with her and neither she nor Gilchrist knew the issue would be on the board’s agenda Thursday.

“We believe the matter should be dropped,” Brunner said.

Gilchrist’s voting record in the November 2009, May 2010, November 2010 and May 2011 elections has been called into question by Lorain resident Denise Caruloff.

She points to the fact that Gilchrist bought a house on Fields Way in the city’s 8th Ward in August or September 2009 but despite moving there — he took possession in December 2009 — he continued to vote in the city’s 2nd Ward for four more elections.

Gilchrist, who declined to comment Thursday, has previously said he voted where his driver’s license said he lived. He has also said he never did anything intentionally wrong and called the complaint ridiculous.

But Gilchrist could potentially face felony criminal charges, depending on the results of the review being conducted by prosecutors and state elections officials.

Brunner, who served as secretary of state for four years, said it’s exceedingly rare for investigations into where someone voted to be sent to prosecutors.

She said it appears that Gilchrist has been singled out for punishment.

Some Gilchrist supporters have suggested that the complaint against Gilchrist, who is black, is racially motivated, an accusation Caruloff has said isn’t true. She points to another complaint she filed challenging the residency of Lorain school board member Paul Biber, who is white, as proof she isn’t targeting anyone because of their race. The elections board dismissed her complaint against Biber.

Brunner also said she couldn’t comment on the results of the elections board investigation because she hasn’t seen the evidence gathered.

According to the evidence gathered by elections board Director Paul Adams and Deputy Director Jim Kramer, Gilchrist first registered to vote in Lorain County in September 2008.

Leases from Jon Veard’s United Property Management Co. show that Gilchrist rented a Broadway apartment from May 31, 2008, to March 9, 2009. Between March 9, 2009, and Aug. 31, 2009, he moved to a larger apartment in the same building.

The leases show that Gilchrist then moved to an Oak Point Road facility also operated by Veard’s company in August 2009 and lived there until December 2009, when he took possession of his new home on Fields Way.

Veard said Thursday that a February eviction notice against Gilchrist for failing to pay rent that was included in the elections board’s file was issued in error because of a computer problem. He said Gilchrist was a model tenant.

The elections board also uncovered evidence that Gilchrist had signed petitions for six Democratic candidates — including his then-boss, Lorain Mayor Tony Krasienko — to get them placed on the May primary ballot. On the petitions he listed his voting address as the Fields Way home, although when he signed the petitions he was still registered to vote at the Broadway apartment.

The investigation also found instances of Gilchrist, who until last month was Lorain’s service director, contributing money to Krasienko’s campaigns in 2010 and 2011 and listing the Fields Way address as his residence for voting purposes.

Gilchrist changed his voter registration to the Fields Way home on Aug. 1, the same day the elections board was scheduled to conduct a hearing into where he should vote in the upcoming election. That hearing was canceled after Gilchrist changed his voter registration.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.