The state Department of Environmental Protection sent the Keystone Sanitary Landfill a letter Friday addressing deficiencies in its 10-year operating permit renewal application — notably pointing out significantly underestimated leachate generation while calling for additional air monitoring and odor mitigation plans.
The Louis and Dominick DeNaples-owned landfill in Dunmore and Throop is required to renew its operating permit every 10 years, with its current permit set to expire Oct. 6 after the DEP extended it by six months in April to give itself additional time to evaluate the landfill’s odor control and leachate management. Leachate is the liquid that percolates through garbage piles.
Addressed to Site Manager Dominick DeNaples Jr., the permit renewal application letter addresses leachate generation that is already nearly 80% higher than the landfill’s peak projections during its Phase III expansion, the potential harms from the landfill’s disposal of leftover waste after it treats its leachate, odor and gas management, and air quality monitoring, among other items.
The DEP extended the permit after the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board, or EHB, remanded the landfill’s 42.4-year Phase III expansion back to the department. Grassroots group Friends of Lackawanna, which formed in 2014 to oppose the landfill and its expansion, appealed the expansion approval in July 2021, taking it to the five-member panel of environmental judges. The Sierra Club, a California-based nonprofit organization with a local and statewide presence, later joined Friends of Lackawanna in the appeal as an intervening party.
The EHB ruled April 1 that the DEP erred in approving the massive expansion June 3, 2021, by issuing a permit that does not sufficiently control or mitigate issues with odors and excessive leachate generation, which the judges said the DEP was aware of prior to approving the expansion.
The controversial Phase III expansion, which Keystone applied for in 2014, allows the landfill to haul in an additional 94 million tons of garbage, or about 188 billion pounds, into the 2060s, significantly extending Keystone’s life by more than four decades.
The ruling did not overturn the expansion, but it does require the DEP to review whether additional measures are needed in the landfill’s permitting to control offsite odors and excess leachate generation.
In its April extension letter, the DEP said it will also use the additional time to evaluate the effectiveness of Keystone’s odor control and leachate management measures that were required under a March 2024 consent order and agreement.
The consent order was the culmination of 14 odor-related violations since January 2023 following nearly 1,000 odor complaints in seven months, as well as DEP staff detecting offsite landfill gas and leachate odors attributed to Keystone at least 70 times. The landfill had to pay a $575,000 fine and was required to undergo 26 corrective actions to manage its odors and address its leachate. Those corrective actions will eventually expire if not added to Keystone’s permitting.
The landfill’s April 2024 permit renewal application estimated that, as of March 20, 2024, it had about 104.7 million tons of remaining capacity. That’s enough to bury about 3,834 Statues of Liberty, including the statue’s 54,000,000-pound concrete base, according to statistics from the National Park Service.
The DEP’s letter, written by David F. Matcho, P.E., the environmental engineering manager at DEP’s Waste Management Program, asks the landfill to reevaluate its maximum leachate generation, pointing out that in 2024, the landfill’s average leachate generation was approximately 227,000 gallons per day — enough leachate to fill a 660,000-gallon Olympic-sized pool in just under three days.
However, the landfill projects that its peak leachate generation is only 127,644 gallons per day in its permit renewal application, according to DEP. The landfill also used the 127,644-gallon-per-day figure during its Phase III expansion approval process.
The letter also addresses the landfill’s disposal of reverse osmosis concentrate on its working face, with Keystone disposing of between approximately 20,000 gallons and 67,000 gallons per day. Keystone pretreats its leachate on site using a process called reverse osmosis, which removes contaminants by forcing the leachate through a membrane under high pressure, before piping the liquid to Pennsylvania American Water’s treatment plant.
Reverse osmosis concentrate is the waste left behind after the leachate is treated.
The DEP asked the landfill to provide an analysis of the effect of reverse osmosis reject disposal on leachate generation, as well to provide data showing the impact the concentrated waste has had on the quality of leachate, reverse osmosis efficiency and leachate odors. Further, the letter instructs the landfill to provide plans to reduce the volume of reverse osmosis concentrate being generated, and the reduction or elimination of its disposal onsite, including data showing the impact of hauling the concentrate offsite.
Because the landfill installed its reverse osmosis units after the DEP conducted a harms/benefits analysis — an analysis that ultimately concluded the benefits of the expansion outweighed the known and potential harms — the DEP also asked Keystone to “identify and fully describe the impact generation and disposal of RO concentrate has on potential harms and describe proposed mitigation for these impacts.”
Those potential harms impacted could include slope stability, leachate generation rates, leachate quality if disposed of at the landfill, odors and truck traffic if disposed of off-site, according to the DEP.
Additionally, the DEP asked the landfill to provide a plan to address odors from its leachate treatment plant, reevaluate the planned use of horizontal gas collection devices as part of its overall gas collection system, reevaluate the maximum acreage of temporary capping it can use on waste to properly manage odors and leachate, and to perform another round of comprehensive air monitoring and enhanced onsite underground gas migration monitoring once an updated air monitoring plan is approved.
In a phone interview Tuesday afternoon, Pat Clark, a leader of Friends of Lackawanna, said at this point, no data or facts coming from the landfill will surprise anyone.
“There’s been no evidence whatsoever that the problems and burdens and harms associated with this growth are going to slow down,” he said. “In fact, quite the opposite has been shown to be the case. All of these problems and burdens are just getting larger and bigger.”
The permit application letter is clearly a reflection of the DEP taking into consideration the Environmental Hearing Board’s order, Clark said.
“We are pleased that the DEP is taking that into consideration and hopefully taking it seriously,” he said, citing the landfill’s excessive leachate generation beyond its peak projections. “There are going to be problems, and these problems keep growing. The interesting question is going to be whether or not DEP is actually, finally, going to do something about it, or are they going to continue as they have for the past 10 years or 20 years or 30 years to give KSL infinite bites at this apple to pass their test.”
The department gave the landfill 60 calendar days to respond to the July 18 letter.