HARRISBURG — Members of groups opposed to a massive, 42-year-long expansion of Keystone Sanitary Landfill testified Monday to a Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board judge that they are concerned negative impacts of the facility will grow.
Attorneys for the landfill owned by brothers Louis and Dominick DeNaples and the state Department of Environmental Protection countered the landfill is a regional necessity for garbage disposal, highly regulated and has been well-run over decades.
Sitting in the state capital of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board Judge Bernard A. Labuskes Jr. began hearing the appeal by the civic group Friends of Lackawanna and environmental advocacy organization the Sierra Club.
The landfill first proposed the expansion in 2014, spurring the Friends of Lackawanna to form in opposition. In 2021, the Department of Environmental Protection approved the 42.4-year expansion called Phase III that will bring in 90 million more tons of trash.
The Friends group appealed the DEP approval to the EHB and the Sierra Club joined the fight against the expansion.
In opening remarks, Friends of Lackawanna attorney Mark Freed said that the DEP has allowed the landfill, just because it already exists, to keep growing and growing, and despite not being able to adequately handle leachate on site.
“When is enough is enough,” Freed said. “At this point, it’s too much.”
Sierra Club attorney Elizabeth Bowers claimed the landfill has been incapable of adequately treating and disposing the leachate liquid that percolates through the trash piles. The landfill has had to regularly truck leachate away for disposal, she noted.
In their separate opening statements, Keystone attorney David Overstreet and DEP attorney Lance Zeyher described the landfill as well-designed, tightly regulated and responsive to concerns.
The DEP did a thorough “harms and benefits” analysis in its 2021 approval of the major permit modification allowing the expansion, Zeyher said. Any problems that arise are engineering problems that can be resolved, he said.
“Make no bones about it, this is a large expansion,” Zeyher said. “Landfills are not popularity contests, but you know what, we need them.”
Describing the expansion approval as a “permit decision,” Zeyher said, “Friends of Lackawanna would like to say enough is enough, shut it down, walk away. It’s not that simple.”
As for leachate problems, the amount of leachate generated by the landfill has been “juiced up,” but that’s because there has been more rain, Zeyher said. Leachate, odors, dust, mud, birds all are not “unsolvable” issues and there are engineering solutions to problems, he said. He also defended the landfill as well-run over its past 40 years.
“Keystone is not a bad actor,” Zeyher said. “In fact, it’s the opposite of a bad actor.”
Overstreet, the landfill attorney, added, “We have a 40-year story to tell here. We have a 40-year story of compliance.”
The proceedings included testimony by Friends of Lackawanna Treasurer Pat Clark of Dunmore and Sierra Club members John Mellow of Archbald and Sarah Helcoski of Jessup.
“The state is sanctioning a concentration of risk on our area,” Clark testified. “This comes down to money. This is not about the environment.”
Roger Bellas, the DEP’s waste program manager for the northeast regional office, also testified at length about the landfill leachate, including that since 2015 there has been “excessive leachate” above predictions and models, and the DEP had concerns about the accuracy of leachate flow rates in each phase of the landfill.
Part of the landfill response to deal with leachate has been “tarping and trucking,” or using tarps to direct rainwater away from trash and “aggressively trucking” leachate to facilities in Altoona and Passaic, New Jersey, as well as using banks of large tanks for temporary emergency storage of leachate on site, Bellas testified.
Freed asked Bellas what analysis DEP did of the impact of trucking leachate out. Bellas testified there has not been any such specific analysis.
The hearings are expected to resume Tuesday and continue to May 1.