The Keystone Sanitary Landfill will pay a nearly $600,000 civil penalty and undergo more than two dozen required corrective actions to mitigate its odors as part of a settlement reached Friday with the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The settlement is the culmination of 14 odor-related violations since January 2023, close to 1,000 odor complaints in seven months and at least 70 instances of DEP staff detecting offsite landfill gas and leachate odors attributed to the Louis and Dominick DeNaples-owned landfill.
Since Sept. 1, the DEP has received 954 odor complaints about the landfill, DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said in a text.
Landfill consultant Al Magnotta contended the determination of an odor and its source are very subjective and vary from person to person.
“We have scientific hard data related to wind speed and direction along with air emissions disbursement models that are at odds with numerous incidents identified in the Consent Order Agreement,” Magnotta said in an emailed statement. “Going forward both KSL and DEP will be using proven scientific instrumentation devices that will eliminate the subjectivity determination as to an odor and its source during the investigation of future complaints.”
The landfill has already started implementing, and in some cases completing, the advanced mitigation program detailed in the agreement, Magnotta said.
Totaling $575,000, the civil penalty is the largest fine issued to the landfill, the DEP said in a news release Monday announcing the settlement. The penalty will be divided among DEP and the landfill’s host municipalities, with $180,000 each to the department, Dunmore and Throop. Keystone will also pay $35,000 to reimburse DEP for costs.
Dunmore and Throop will be required to use their shares for community environmental projects that will “substantially improve, protect, restore or remediate the environment, or which improve, protect or reduce risks to the public health or safety,” according to the consent order and agreement.
In addition to the fines, the landfill is required to undergo 26 corrective actions to mitigate odors pertaining to its leachate storage, leachate treatment and temporary and permanent covers for its waste piles, according to the consent order and agreement. Leachate is the liquid that percolates through garbage piles.
The majority of the corrective actions have specific deadlines to carry out the work. Actions include using a foam and additive in its leachate, using a new temporary cover system on its waste, applying with DEP to install two 2.5-million-gallon leachate storage tanks rather than its current leachate lagoons, re-evaluating the effectiveness of its reverse osmosis system to treat leachate, implementing additional surface monitoring and accelerating its capping schedule of at least 30 acres to minimize areas with a temporary cover, according to the DEP and the settlement. If the landfill fails to comply, it will be fined $250 to $500 per day for each violation, depending on the violation.
In total, the DEP determined the landfill:
failed to implement its nuisance minimization and control plan, permitted the emission of a malodorous air contaminant from the facility into the atmosphere that were detectable outside of the facility, failed to prevent and control air pollution
failed to implement its gas control and monitoring plan
failed to maintain a uniform intermediate cover that prevents odors
failed to properly conduct enhanced surface monitoring on intermediate slopes
The failures violate the Solid Waste Management Act, the Air Pollution Control Act, DEP’s regulations and conditions in the landfill’s existing permits, according to DEP.
It is unacceptable for the landfill to disrupt and endanger residents’ quality of life, Dunmore Mayor Max Conway said. “While I appreciate the DEP’s action, it’s obvious that continued vigilance and pressure are necessary to ensure such violations are addressed promptly and effectively now, and if necessary, in the future,” Conway said. “I hope the message is clear: Our residents deserve better.” The $180,000 penalty is a start, but it should be more, Conway said.
Throop Council President Rich Kucharski agreed. “We won’t turn it away,” he said. “It’s still a minimal price to pay with respect to all the odors and everything that the residents have had to endure.” The corrective actions are most important, though, Kucharski said. “The money is obviously not significant based on the operation and the amount of trash they bring in and the amount of money they bring in,” he said. “The critical piece is the fix.”
“For Pat Clark, a leader of grassroots group Friends of Lackawanna, which formed in 2014 in opposition of the landfill and its now approved expansion, the settlement is “a direct acknowledgement by both the landfill and DEP that this facility is hazardous, harmful and detrimental to our quality of life.”
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Friends of Lackawanna will go before the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board on April 22 to appeal the landfill’s Phase III expansion, which the DEP approved June 3, 2021.
The expansion allows Keystone to continue hauling in garbage for the next four decades, totaling just over 94 million tons of trash, or about 188 billion pounds.
Clark believes the settlement strengthens their case to overturn the expansion. “We started this fight with a file that was empty,” he said. “There were no logged complaints, no violations, no anything.”
Clark thanked residents of Northeast Pennsylvania and Friends of Lackawanna’s supporters for their willingness to speak up and log complaints, attributing the settlement to sustained community involvement.
“After years of calls falling on deaf ears coupled with no violations or penalties, the file continues to grow against KSL,” Clark said. “It took ten years to start being heard. It’s about time.”
Timeline of recent odor violations
The DEP first cited the landfill with nine odor-related violations on Jan. 25, 2023, after receiving 233 odor complaints from Sept. 1, 2022, to Jan. 20, 2023.
The DEP began conducting daily odor patrols in areas surrounding the landfill on Nov. 13 in response to additional odor complaints.
Eight days later on Nov. 21, the DEP blamed uncontrolled odors and suspended the landfill’s ability to remove the cover from existing piles of garbage that had naturally settled to bring the trash piles back up to their original height and reclaim “lost air space.” The suspension affected less than 10 acres of the 714-acre landfill. Keystone subsequently appealed that suspension to the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board.
The department cited the landfill again on Dec. 13 for an odor violation, followed by four more odor violations on Jan. 8.
Since Sept. 1, the DEP has received 954 odor complaints about the landfil
April 1, 2024 DEP and KSL negotiate a Consent Order and Settlement for odor violations, including creating malodors, at its facility in the boroughs of Dunmore and Throop between November 2023 and February 2024, and impacting residents in several surrounding communities.