Well said, Richard Yost! Another great Letter to the Editor from a concerned citizen.

Unfavorable caution

Editor: For the past 25 years or so, if Louis DeNaples didn’t want you to be a candidate for public office in Northeast Pennsylvania, you usually would not be.

It attests to his power and influence.

Perhaps there is change in the air, but has anyone told current officeholders? As they have been repeatedly queried by The Times-Tribune, many are cautious to the point of cluelessness about the proposed Keystone Sanitary Landfill expansion.

Lackawanna County Commissioner Patrick O’Malley is challenging the landfill’s position; state Rep. Marty Flynn supports it, which is not a pleasant matter for me with my state legislator. U.S. Rep. Tom Marino is silent. Why would he speak up? He has been in DeNaples’s pocket for at least 10 years.

All the while, state Sen. John Blake is trying too hard to establish his sincerity. Therein lie the different takes on the on the sad legacy of the landfill’s proposed environmental and aesthetic degradation.

The Dunmore pact has been deemed the worst in the country; we are now being called the “dump yard of the East Coast.”

On another front, a fuel leak on DeNaples property along the Lackawanna River speaks also to a general lack of care and concern about ecology.

Add to that, after a period of 12 to 15 years of shrinkage at the junkyard along Interstate 81 in Dunmore, there is growth again. Many potential visitors essentially see it as a warning not to enter Scranton.

Add all this up and you get a place at odds with itself, one that hangs on with short-term profit over long-term enduring value.

RICHARD J. YOST

SOUTH ABINGTON TWP.

http://thetimes-tribune.com/opinion/letters/letters-to-the-editor-12-23-2014-1.1806753