DUNMORE, Pa. — A more than week-long hearing is expected to start Monday in Harrisburg to decide if a Lackawanna County landfill can pile on waste in the coming decades.
The hearing in front of the state Environmental Hearing Board centers on an appeal of the state Department of Environmental Protection’s 2021 approval of Keystone Sanitary Landfill’s expansion.
Friends of Lackawanna, a citizens’ group formed roughly a decade ago in response to Keystone’s planned growth, wants to halt the expansion and argues the landfill pollutes the community, mars its beauty and diminishes property values. The Sierra Club, an environmental conservation organization, later signed on with FOL’s appeal.
Keystone’s planned growth over 42 years is “triple the size” of its last expansion without “any documented reasoning for such,” argued FOL’s attorneys in legal briefs.
“KSL has not shown that it can or will operate in compliance with the environmental statutes and regulations,” wrote Mark Freed, a lawyer for FOL.
The area where the landfill sits started accepting waste in the early 1970s, according to Keystone. It covers 714 acres and is allowed to accept up to 7,500 tons of waste each day. The state DEP says Keystone’s expansion plan does not propose an increase of its daily maximum or quarterly average waste acceptance rates.
The area where the landfill proposes expansion is in the valley between existing disposal areas. The state DEP in 2021 approved the landfill’s application for a permit modification to begin the expansion process.
The FOL and Sierra Club appealed soon after. Nearly three years later, the Environmental Hearing Board is set to decide.
In legal filings, Keystone claims FOL and the Sierra Club presented a “warped” view of its operation and they singled out FOL as “anti-landfill agitators.” FOL and Sierra Club will not be able to meet its burden of showing to the hearing board that the DEP abused its discretion by issuing Keystone approval, the landfills attorneys argued.
The landfill’s attorneys argue it is a “well-designed, tightly-regulated and well-run regional solid waste disposal facility that has been under constant and continual oversight and inspection” by the state DEP for decades.
“KSL does not contend that it is a perfect facility,” the facilities attorneys wrote in legal filings. “Indeed, no modern sanitary landfill in the Commonwealth, or elsewhere, is perfect. But the standard is not perfection, as FOL and Sierra Club suggest it must be.”
The start of the appeal hearing also comes weeks after the state DEP announced the landfill agreed to pay $575,000 in civil penalties because of hundreds of complaints of foul smells.
The department said that’s the largest issued to the landfill in a decade.
The payments will be split between Dunmore and Throop, which host the landfill and take in millions of dollars each year from the facility through their host agreements.
The appeal hearing is scheduled to end May 1.