KSL's Wastewater Permit CHANGED Mid-Contract to Allow Use of the Green Ridge Sewer Line in Apparent Violation of Settlement Agreement with the Residents of Scranton
Because the citizens of Scranton and Scranton Council did not want leachate running through the Green Ridge line--which is a combined sewer overflow line where leachate could back up into their homes, overflow into the Lackawanna River or smells and toxins could escape through stormwater drains into the air--they entered into a Settlement Agreement with Keystone Sanitary Landfill (KSL) in 1990 that resulted in a dedicated line being constructed to take leachate from the landfill to the Sewer Authority.
KSL's 2012-2017 Wastewater Permit with SSA ONLY permitted use of the dedicated line, consistent with the Settlement Agreement. However, during the investigation of the mysterious malodorous substance that flowed through the Green Ridge line and evacuated the Sleep Inn and St. Joe's last September, Friends of Lackawanna raised questions about KSL's use of the Green Ridge line since they had admitted to running leachate down it that same night in violation of the permit. On December 17, 2015, the Scranton Sewer Authority CHANGED the permit to ALLOW use of the Green Ridge line for leachate!
There does not appear to be any special conditions for this use and since the Green Ridge line is gravity fed, why would KSL pay to pump leachate through the dedicated line? Also, broken pumps or "mechanical failures" should not have been an excuse to use the unpermitted Green Ridge line--the leachate lagoons at KSL can hold 11 million gallons and are required to be able to handle overflow and the leachate can be trucked to the SSA, as it was for 3 years during construction of KSL's onsite pre-treatment plant.
This landfill continues to play by a different set of rules and put the health and safety of our citizens at risk. It needs to be shut down. Enough is enough!