Here's is WNEP-TV's piece on the EHB ruling.
"This is a clear and hard-fought victory for our community — one that forces stronger environmental protections and greater accountability moving forward," the group said. "Your support, your calls and your love of NEPA are the reason why."
Watch the full vide
HARRISBURG, Pa. — The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection made a mistake in approving a Lackawanna County landfill's massive planned expansion without measures sufficiently handle its offsite smells and its ability to handle liquids that seep from the garbage, the state Environmental Hearing Board said.
The ruling issued Monday by a five-judge panel in Harrisburg marked a partial victory for Friends of Lackawanna, a non-profit founded in opposition to the Keystone Sanitary Landfill's decades-long expansion which appealed approval of a state permit allowing the plans.
The panel found the DEP mistakenly issued a permitted that does not sufficiently mitigate concerns raised by the landfill's opponents, concerns that court records show were also shared by those tasked by DEP with weighing the landfill's harms and benefits.
The board's order, however, does not automatically undo Keystone's plans to extend its life by 42 years by taking in another 94 million cubic tons of waste. It remands Keystone's expansion back to the DEP to determine whether more measures to control odors and leachate — some of which is required by a consent order imposed after a violation — should be included in the landfill's permit.
"The landfill has experienced challenges controlling offsite odors and excess leachate generation at its facility for several years," the five-panel board wrote. "The Department erred in issuing a permit that does not sufficiently control or mitigate these issues."
The landfill can continue to operate during the remand.
During a hearing last spring, the department signaled it is interested in amending Keystone's expansion permit based partly on what it learns from the landfill's compliance with the consent order.
The area straddling the Dunmore/Throop line started accepting waste in the early 1970s. It covers 714 acres and is allowed to take in roughly 7,500 tons of waste each day.
The DEP approved a permit modification in June 2021 for an expansion that would roughly triple the landfill's capacity over the next four decades.
That prompted an appeal by FOL that led to this week's board determination prompting another look at the conditions of such a permit modification.
Colleen Connolly, a spokeswoman for the DEP, said the department "received and is reviewing" the board's ruling.
In a statement, FOL said the landfill's expansion is "now clouded with uncertainty."
"This is a clear and hard-fought victory for our community — one that forces stronger environmental protections and greater accountability moving forward," the group said. "Your support, your calls and your love of NEPA are the reason why."
A message left for Keystone was not immediately returned.
According to the ruling, DEP conducted an analysis of the harms and benefits of allowing Keystone to proceed.
The harms DEP considered, according to court paperwork, included odors, litter, noise, air pollution, groundwater impacts, the discharge of treated leachate in the Lackawanna River and the marring of the valley's aesthetic.
Against these were recycling and cleanup programs provided by the landfill, the purchase of goods and services, jobs and municipal funding in the form of disposal fees, tax revenue and host agreements with Dunmore and Throop.
The court ruling, citing a transcript of a hearing held last year, revealed internal disagreements on how to proceed.
"Keystone is not wrong in saying that localized odors are a reality at any landfill," the panel said. "But the frequency and duration of odor and malodor events that Keystone has experienced has exceeded an acceptable baseline for normal landfill operations."
"We do not doubt the complexity of operating a landfill," they continued. "But the same problems have been occurring for years without being fully controlled by Keystone, despite its efforts, and despite the conditions of the Phase III permit or Keystone’s Department-approved (nuisance minimization and control plan)."
Erika Bloxham, a DEP staffer who wrote the majority of the harms-benefit analysis, determined the benefits "did not clearly outweigh the harms," according to the filings. That was because of the issues Keystone had with managing its leachate, the volume of which frequently exceeded a threshold established to prevent spillage.
Her supervisor, Roger Bellas, disagreed with her assessment and wrote the conclusion supporting the issuance of Keystone's permit modification.
As for the odor – an issue raised in hundreds of complaints to the DEP over the years – Bellas testified at the hearing the conditions imposed by the permit did not successfully prevent odors, "all but conceding" the permitting conditions were inadequate, the ruling stated.