January 26, 2016

FOL core member, Michele Dempsey, makes great points in today's Times-Tribune article regarding the leachate that KSL consultant, Al Magnotta, admitted they discharged into an unpermitted sewer line on the night of the horrid solvent incident that is now conveniently a "mistake" caused by "miscommunication" and they didn't actually discharge leachate--despite the fact the valve had been left open for an unknown amount of time! This is insulting to the citizen's intelligence.

Excerpt:
“It is unnerving and unacceptable that the DEP’s final answer to so many important questions is a shoulder shrug that only serves to raise even more questions,” said an emailed statement from one of the group’s leaders, Michele Dempsey. “There are relationships between the entities involved in this investigation that are preventing the community from getting answers. It’s time to look at the close relationships that exist between KSL and SSA ... and the cozy relationship between KSL and DEP that hints at the latter being a captured agency.”

Those close relationships include the fact that Keystone Sanitary Landfill (KSL) and the Scranton Sewer Authority (SSA) share the same solicitor, the same engineer and the owner and director of each company are close friends. And DEP often seems to be protecting KSL more than the citizens, as evidenced by not reporting that leachate was leaking into our ground water for over 12 years and not issuing a violation. Now they appear to have KSL's interests at heart again, saying the leachate incident was a "miscommunication".

Captured agency refers to a government agency unduly influenced by economic interest groups directly affected by its decisions. It shapes its regulations and policies primarily to benefit its favored client groups at the expense of less organized and often less influential groups rather than design them in accordance with some broader or more inclusive conception of the public interest.

http://thetimes-tribune.com/…/landfill-says-it-was-mistaken…