Richard Yost is spot on in his Letter to the Editor. The young people who have returned to this area and started businesses and families are fighting hard to protect its future. They are the people you will lose or who will not return if the expansion happens. How do you measure that in terms of economic development? Friends of Lackawanna made history by being the first community group to write a Harms-Benefit Analysis to challenge the landfill. If the DEP wants to stop this expansion, they have the information they need to do it. The question is: Are they willing to?

Genuine disgust

Editor: Some people “in the know” believe that Louis DeNaples will get his 50-year expansion of Keystone Sanitary Landfill. If that is so, how dispiriting it is.

And it will be legal. Ancient laws, along with a sodden bureaucracy, may guarantee it. In addition, most of our current crop of politicians won’t oppose it.

As to DeNaples, he has long since given himself over to disregard for the will of the people. On the other side of this critical issue stands a superlative community organization — Friends of Lackawanna. From the membership of the group and its sympathizers come those who have returned to the area so that their children and their grandchildren can have the same glorious experience of growing up here. Caring neighborhoods meant frequent gatherings in homes and churches, along with ethnic celebrations in parks, plus sports and concerts, crafts exhibits and antique automobile shows.

Amidst the present conflict, much of that still remains. It forms the heart of “scrappy Scranton.” Next year marks the city’s 150th anniversary.

But what if the positives are occluded or overwhelmed by selfish interests? Many people, including some of our most passionate citizens, won’t stay around just to pay homage to an earlier era. They want and need a tangible reason for hope.

The disgust we feel is genuine. Our fate has been tied to DeNaples’ fortunes for too long.

RICHARD J. YOST

SOUTH ABINGTON TWP.