This is an excellent Editorial in the Scranton Times. It highlights so many of the issues Friends of Lackawanna has been promoting for the past 8 years. Please read it below.
Key takeaways:
--> The never ending burden this dump puts on the citizens of NEPA
--> How these burdens will only get worse as it grows
--> The value of clean waterways
--> DEP's rubber stamping treatment when it comes to this landfill
--> The importance of municipal cooperation
--> The impact of this expansion not just on Dunmore and Throop but of the entire region.
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Wolf should heed request on landfillnion/wolf-should-heed-request-on-landfill/article_b9553c65-4f86-55b6-a2c3-b2cec6e31837.html?fbclid=IwAR1gdVsoAVSdC4GNGeGGQ6GamJQVAgW3BHESvK106JEmHd0SJ43oQxRerMg
BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Allowing another 94 million tons of mostly imported garbage to be dumped at the Keystone Sanitary Landfill over the next 38 years obviously ill serves the environmental and health interests of Northeast Pennsylvania.
But that has not stopped the state Department of Environmental Protection from approving the vast landfill expansion. So there is no reason to believe that the DEP will be any more skeptical about the landfill’s ancillary plan to dump 200,000 gallons a day of treated landfill effluent, known as leachate, into Little Roaring Brook in Dunmore.
The stream is a tributary of the Lackawanna River, which is a tributary of the Susquehanna River, which is the largest source of freshwater flowing into Chesapeake Bay. Pennsylvania has committed billions of dollars to reducing pollution in the Susquehanna watershed as to vastly improve the bay’s health. The federal government has ordered costly upgrades to sewer systems throughout the watershed in the same cause.
Yet the DEP might allow the landfill to dump the treated leachate — water that percolates from the landfill — into the stream rather than requiring further treatment at the sewer plant serving Scranton and Dunmore.
On several scores, Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti and city council, and Dunmore Mayor Max Conway and borough council, deserve credit for jointly asking Gov. Tom Wolf to ensure the quality of the state’s review.
One issue is the project itself. Another is the DEP’s performance. In a letter to Wolf, they noted the burden that the DEP has ensured for the region by approving the unwarranted landfill expansion and stated flatly that “the department has a record of granting the landfill exactly what it requests.”
The best feature of the joint effort is that it runs counter to the parochial, fragmented local governance that plays a major role in allowing polluters to employ a divide-and-conquer strategy.
By acting jointly, the Scranton and Dunmore officials make a more emphatic case about the landfill’s regional impact, which is far greater than the DEP’s mere technical review suggests.
Wolf should get that message and ensure that the public interest is included in the agency’s latest review. Other local officials should get the message that communities regionwide must act in concert on common quality of life issues.