No, this is not a belated April Fool’s Day joke. Although, it is laughable.
Keystone Sanitary Landfill (KSL) recently filed their response to the Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Notice of Violations stemming from more than 230 phone calls reporting foul odors in our community.
They claim,
““…the vast majority of the odor complaints were the result of a few individuals, fueled by Friends of Lackawanna’s encouragement…” ”
Moreover, the landfill cites a “personal vendetta” and “blatant fear mongering” by FOL throughout the years saying we agitate members and the community to file complaints that are “baseless” and “falsely reported.”
As if those statements were not inflammatory enough, they continue:
“It is grossly irresponsible for FOL and its members to terrorize the community by asserting, without basis, that regional air quality threatens the health and well being of citizens of Dunmore and surrounding communities. It is particularly irresponsible for FOL to scare Keystone’s friends and neighbors into believing that the landfill is causing nonexistent threats to their well being.” ”
We, of course, find this all laughable. As our own Pat Clark retorts,
That’s insane. There are enough real odors. We don’t have to worry about fake odors.
It’s almost like the landfill thinks we can put the bat signal up, and people just reply to it and say, ‘Oh, call in the false odors now.’ In reality, it smells like rotting garbage, and people know what it is, and for years and years and years, no one knew where to call.
We’re not terrorizing the community at all. We’re sticking up for citizens of NEPA, which has been going on for 30 years, and giving them means to fight back and report things that negatively impact their day to day life.
The DEP is reviewing KSL’s response and once complete will make the determination whether the mitigation efforts being implemented by KSL are effective at reducing odors.
Curious how they’ll make that determination since KSL claims there are no “real” odors.