DUNMORE, Pa. — Local officials are concerned over a proposal for a landfill in Lackawanna County to drain treated water into a nearby creek.
The Keystone Sanitary Landfill in Dunmore applied for a permit through the state to treat leachate from the landfill and then release it into a nearby creek.
Bernie McGurl is the executive director of the Lackawanna River Conservation Association. He's upset about the Keystone Landfill's request to treat up to 200,000 gallons of leachate a day and discharge it directly into the creek.
"This watershed, Lackawanna County, has borne an undue burden for municipal waste for the entire northeast Middle Atlantic region. And what do we get for now? Just more burden, more burden? Where's the benefit? I don't see any benefit to it."
Currently, leachate from the Keystone Landfill goes to the Scranton Sewer Authority to be treated. This week, Dunmore borough and the city of Scranton wrote a letter to Governor Wolf expressing their concern over the landfill's request to start treating the leachate itself.
"We want to make sure the governor is aware of this request. We know that bureaucracies can be big and unwieldy. We wanted to make sure that it went all the way to the governor's desk to ask that this be a carefully looked-at issue," said Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti.
The quality of the water when it is treated is not the main concern of the municipalities. The biggest worry is if something goes wrong and untreated leachate is dumped into the waterways.
"I know the technology that is proposed is pretty sophisticated, but it's technology just like everything else. It's only as good as it's operated and maintained," McGurl said.
"If it does go through, we would want to see all the reasons why it's safe to do that, why it's safe for our community, why it won't contribute negatively to our environment. We don't want any more negative impacts to our water or air to future generations right here in northeastern Pennsylvania," Mayor Cognetti added.
Keystone Landfill needs approval from the Pennsylvania DEP before it can start treating leachate and sending it into Little Roaring Brook.
It's not clear when the DEP might make a decision, but last year the DEP signed off on a big expansion of the Keystone Landfill.
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