This OpEd by FOL's Pat Clark points out the continued failures by DEP and how the citizens of NEPA take a second seat to generational garbage.
"We know there can be a bright future for Northeast Pennsylvania, a future that can overcome this undeniable setback. And we know that belief exists in many by virtue of the unending support and encouragement we have received since we began.
For this, we will be forever grateful. We aren’t going anywhere and with the public’s support, we will continue to fight."
Full column (and link to online version) below.
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DEP fails mission, reason to exist in landfill ruling
BY PATRICK CLARK GUEST COLUMNIST
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s approval of the Keystone Sanitary Landfill’s expansion request is an absolute failure on every level and solidifies its complete disregard for the citizens of Northeast Pennsylvania.
It validated what many in our area have suspected for 30 years and will now live with for another 40 — that the money from generational garbage trumps all else including our health and future. The landfill will now be allowed to triple the amount of trash it already has and extend its life by four decades. At the end of this permit, Lackawanna County’s monument to trash will house more than 300 billion pounds of waste, most from out of state.
For years, people have called the DEP, and its decision-making processes, incompetent. However, we disagree. This process and decision is much worse than mere incompetence. It is dismissive. It is hypocritical. It is dangerous. It is another large-scale example of the DEP failing its mission, its only reason for existence: “...to protect Pennsylvania’s air, land and water from pollution and to provide for the health and safety of its citizens through a cleaner environment.”
We believe this decision is an irredeemable indictment of the DEP. However, this isn’t just our opinion. In recent years, independent institutions in Pennsylvania also have called out the DEP for its continued failures.
A 2020 grand jury report, examining the DEP’s oversight of the natural gas fracking industry, concluded that the DEP “did not do enough to properly protect the health, safety and welfare of the thousands of Pennsylvania citizens who were affected by this industry” and “government institutions often failed in their constitutional duty to act as a trustee and guardian “of all the people,” as Article 1, Section 27 (of the Pennsylvania Constitution) provides … We believe some DEP employees saw the job more as serving the industry than the public.”
A 2017 ruling by Pennsylvania’s Environmental Hearing Board, in examining DEP’s handling of the landfill, found that DEP has not “consistently exercised vigorous oversight of the landfill consistent with its regulatory and constitutional responsibilities with just as much concern about the rights of the landfill’s neighbors as the rights of the landfill.”
Throughout this expansion evaluation, the DEP has displayed an unfailing ability to provide the landfill with every possible benefit of the doubt. It has minimized any discovered problems. It has papered over shortcomings. It has ushered the landfill through the gates of approval while attempting to window-dress the process by substituting thickness of binders for fairness and common sense.
The landfill’s submissions, of course, are curated for their benefit. However, the DEP’s default stance of “taking the landfill’s word for it” falls short of any standard of reasonableness:
■ The health consultation report’s recommendation for additional air monitoring, since some of the contaminants detected in the air can cause transitory health effects for pregnant women, children, older adults and people with respiratory disease? Let’s request the landfill put together its own proposed air monitoring program. Check.
■ The impact on property values? The landfill retained a real estate appraiser who said there are no diminished values. Check.
■ The 15-plus years of known groundwater contamination? The landfill says it figured that out. Check.
■ The negative impact on an environmental justice community? We had an extra hearing; good enough. Check.
■ The ongoing, active investigation by the state attorney general’s office into the landfill? Approve the expansion before getting results. Check.
■ The nearly unanimous opposition of elected officials to this expansion? Thanks for your letters. Check.
Friends of Lackawanna has fought this fight tirelessly since 2014. Although this decision is the exact opposite of what we have worked for, we believe that since 2014, there has been a sea change of attitudes in what can be done for the area. It feels like people are more willing to stand up for themselves. To stop accepting the status quo. To get involved. To fight for a better future. And we believe that Friends of Lackawanna helped light that fuse.
We know there can be a bright future for Northeast Pennsylvania, a future that can overcome this undeniable setback. And we know that belief exists in many by virtue of the unending support and encouragement we have received since we began.
For this, we will be forever grateful. We aren’t going anywhere and with the public’s support, we will continue to fight.
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