This is The Scranton Times-Tribune editorial about KSL's request to send up to *200,000 gallons of leachate per day* directly into our waterways.
The editorial draws a natural, logical conclusion given how DEP has interacted with the Landfill over the past few decades: "... the DEP (should) require Keystone continue to send its leachate through the sewer system operated by a separate entity, which also would ensure a set of eyes on the process other than those of state regulators who too often have served the landfill’s interests rather than the public’s."
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Send dump's water to sewer plant
BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD Aug 5, 2022
The state agency that can’t detect odors wafting from the massive Keystone Sanitary Landfill, and which has signed off on its gargantuan expansion, has set a low bar for protecting the public’s interest in a clean environment — even though that is a constitutional right in Pennsylvania.
Now, the landfill wants the Department of Environmental Protection to allow it to dump up to 200,000 gallons of landfill wastewater, every day, into Little Roaring Brook — therefore, downstream into Roaring Brook, the Lackawanna River, the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay.
The effluent, known as leachate, would be treated at the landfill before discharge, using a state-of-the-art process called reverse osmosis.
But the landfill’s plan is rooted in its own economic interest rather than environmental quality. Leachate that the landfill produces now is pretreated at the landfill and then discharged into the Pennsylvania American Water sewer system to be treated a second time before its discharge into the Lackawanna River — treatment for which the landfill must pay.
In a decision that egregiously contradicts the public interest, the DEP in 2021 approved Keystone’s expansion. That will allow another 94 million tons of mostly out-of-state garbage to be dumped at Keystone through 2060.
Even that won’t be the end of Keystone’s massive environmental impact. It is the gift to Northeast Pennsylvania that keeps on giving. Those millions of tons of deteriorating garbage will continue to produce gas, which the landfill collects for use as fuel to produce electricity. And the landfill will generate billions of gallons of wastewater far into the future. Allowing Keystone to dump that water into Little Roaring Brook to avoid sewer fees will save the landfill millions of dollars over time.
The DEP has asked landfill host communities Dunmore and Throop for recommendations. Both borough councils should not just recommend, but demand, that the DEP require Keystone continue to send its leachate through the sewer system operated by a separate entity, which also would ensure a set of eyes on the process other than those of state regulators who too often have served the landfill’s interests rather than the public’s.