LETTER TO THE EDITOR

November 3, 2014

A fantastic letter to the editor in the Times Tribune today by Katherine Mackrell Oven!

Excerpts:

Editor: In an Oct. 19 op-ed article, Albert Magnotta tries to make a case for the benefits of the proposed Keystone Sanitary Landfill expansion.

Mr. Magnotta quantifies the estimated financial benefits to the state and regional economy as $3 billion over 50 years. However, he neglects to quantify the potential damage to property values due to the fact that no one will look to purchase homes in Dunmore, given that the landfill’s new height will be higher than five Bank Towers buildings.

Has anyone taken into consideration the health care costs that may be associated with a plethora of illness potentially linked to living in close proximity to a landfill?

There are vast expanses of undeveloped, unpopulated areas throughout Pennsylvania far more suitable for this mountain of garbage.

So when Mr. Magnotta says the harms are minimal, I disagree.

People of our area deserve the opportunity to live and raise our families in a safe and healthy environment.

 

LANDFILL ANALYSIS PITS MONEY VS. INTANGIBLES

Excellent rebuttal to the Harms/Benefit Analysis by Pat Clark in the Times-Tribune today.

Excerpt:

Pat Clark, a Dunmore resident and co- founder of online recruiting software company Hyrell, has been following the expansion closely, going through the harms-benefits analysis and making notes.

“I think the whole process is largely a sham,” he said.

The core of the problem is that the landfill lists benefits with a dollar amount, while harms are not quantified, he said.

“Not one harm has a dollar amount on it other than the cost to repave the road that the dump trucks are going to use to get into the landfill,” he said, though he acknowledged it would be difficult to place a dollar value on something like an unobstructed view of the mountains.

Plus, some of those benefits — payroll, taxes and expenses — are also part of the cost of doing business, he said, and shouldn’t be considered.

“Those are mandatory things you have to do as a business to make more money,” he said.

RUNNING OUT OF SPACE?

The landfill consultant is now saying that the landfill will run out of space in about 5 years and transporting trash out of the area will be expensive for taxpayers. However, the short-term financial challenges mentioned by the consultant would be absolutely dwarfed by the long term negative financial, health and environmental impacts on our community if the expansion is allowed—the Sunday Times reported our groundwater is already compromised. Our property values, our environment and the health of our community depend on stopping the expansion.

As Katherine Oven says in the article, “The financial and logistical problems of waste disposal is not a valid reason to continue sending trash to Dunmore and Throop for nearly another half-century.” And Tim Burke “feared the figure was “a scare tactic” to move the application along.”