The Landfill just filed its reply to the DEP's most recent technical deficiency letter. It's over 800 pages. As stated in today's The Scranton Times-Tribune this is KSL's "latest attempt to substitute complexity for sanity."
We are getting close to DEP decision time on the expansion and we'll be updating everyone regularly from now through the decision.
You can read the full story online or below.
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Landfill responds to DEP technical deficiency letter on 42-year expansion, begins countdown for final decision
The DEP will have until the week of Feb. 22 to either approve the landfill's expansion or send the landfill a pre-denial letter
BY FRANK WILKES LESNEFSKY STAFF WRITER
The state Department of Environmental Protection could make a decision on the Keystone Sanitary Landfill’s proposed 42-year expansion by the end of February.
The landfill’s Phase III expansion moved into the DEP’s final phase of reviews — the technical review phase — April 30, initiating the process that will ultimately decide the controversial expansion’s fate. The DEP reviewed Keystone plans, and on Sept. 8, cited dozens of technical deficiencies, asking for clarification, updates and additional information on more than 60 items in the landfill’s expansion plans. Keystone submitted its initial application for expansion in 2014.
In its deficiency letter to the landfill, the DEP noted deficiencies including Keystone’s contingency plan, facility plan, eventual closure plan, groundwater, odor control and leachate generation.
On Nov. 25, the DEP received Keystone’s 838-page response to the technical deficiency letter, giving the organization 60 business days to review Keystone’s response, DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said in an email. Taking holidays into account, the DEP’s due date will fall during the week of Feb. 22, Connolly said.
Attempts to reach landfill officials were unsuccessful Tuesday.
When the DEP completes its second technical design review, it has two options, according to a landfill fact sheet. If the DEP determines the landfill’s response is sufficient, it will approve the application. If it is insufficient, the landfill will receive a pre-denial letter, giving it another opportunity to respond.
Following the landfill’s response, the DEP would then hold a final technical review and issue a decision within 30 days, according to the fact sheet.
The landfill in Dunmore and Throop would close in 2064, with closure plans including planting grass and other vegetation and offering the land to Throop and Dunmore boroughs as a green-space buffer between the Casey Highway and the towns, according to supplemental information Keystone previously submitted to the DEP.
In total, the 42.41-year expansion would bring in 94,085,925 tons of municipal solid waste, or about 188 billion pounds, according to the landfill’s response. The waste would total 126,496,981 cubic yards, or enough garbage to bury nearly 5,930 professional football fields under 10 feet of trash — high enough to reach the crossbars of the goal posts.
Pat Clark, a leader of anti-landfill expansion grassroots group Friends of Lackawanna, called the landfill’s more than 800-page response “their latest attempt to substitute complexity for sanity.”
“After six years, all this does is magnify how much risk is at hand and how much of our future is at stake,” he said in an emailed statement.
Clark also pointed to the landfill’s location and noted multiple previous revisions to Keystone’s plans due to deficiencies.
“A mega landfill in the middle of a community will never make residents healthier nor improve the environment,” he said. “That fact cannot be changed no matter how many ways you attempt to spin it.”