The Scranton Times Editorial Board hits it right on the nose!
Who has a better idea of what garbage smells like than someone who lives downwind from a landfill?
For four decades, residents of Dunmore and Throop have put up with a malodorous neighbor, the 714-acre Keystone Sanitary Landfill, owned by Louis and Dominick DeNaples.
The DeNapleses, determined to squeeze every bit of profit out of the site, have recently been removing the caps over old waste piles in areas that have settled over the years to add new garbage and “reclaim air space.”
Their put-upon neighbors, who would probably love to reclaim their own befouled “air space,” have complained the work has generated noxious odors, leading to more than 260 complaints to the state Department of Environmental Protection since Oct. 1.
In reaction, DEP has suspended Keystone’s permission to continue uncovering and filling in those settled areas while the landfill implements mitigation plans. But Keystone contests DEP’s conclusion that its operations produced the odors in question. In a communication to DEP, landfill Business Manager Dan O’Brien maintained:
“The public in general is not qualified to either identify a specific odor or make a determination as to the origin of the odor and yet the conclusion is always the same — ‘it has to be the landfill.’ ”
Laughably, O’Brien pointed the finger at other “business operations, infrastructure performance issues, marshes and poorly maintained drainage ponds in the immediate area that produce odors, some on a regular basis.”
Landfill consultant Al Magnotta claimed opponents of Keystone’s plans to dump an additional 180 billion pounds of trash, most of it from out of state, at the landfill over the next 40 years are filing the odor complaints to “make a record” as they appeal DEP’s 2021 approval of the landfill expansion to the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board.
To its credit, DEP has put odor patrols in place around the landfill, but given the agency’s track record, expect that Keystone’s operations in those settled areas will resume after the landfill finishes promised mitigation measures. The agency too often takes the “protection” portion of its title too lightly when dealing with the industries it regulates. That’s an issue that should concern residents in towns across Northeast Pennsylvania, including Hazleton, where the agency has given a developer until April to fix deficiencies in its application for a trash transfer station bitterly opposed by property owners there.
If DEP’s egregious approval of Keystone’s expansion stands, generations to come in Dunmore and Throop will be dealing with the odor, traffic and other headaches associated with living near a landfill through 2060 and beyond. And the landfill’s owners and operators will go on blaming puddles and wetlands for the stink while pocketing the profits.
While awaiting the decision on their expansion appeal, the landfill’s neighbors should keep up the pressure on DEP by reporting what their lived experience tells them are odors coming from Keystone.
After all, who are you going to believe? Louis DeNaples or your own nose?