Pennsylvania DEP approves permit for Tri-County Landfill in Mercer County

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has approved the first of a handful of permits needed to reopen the Tri-County Landfill near Grove City in Mercer County, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The DEP operating permit, announced Dec. 28, allows Tri-County Inc. to construct a new landfill within the 99-acre footprint of the old one and bring in 600 truckloads or up to 4,000 tons of trash a day. It also requires the landfill operator to excavate more than 1.5 million cubic yards of waste from the old unlined landfill and relocate it to new lined and monitored areas of the landfill.

Reopening the landfill, which started operating in Liberty and Pine townships in 1950 and closed in 1990 after it couldn’t meet new state regulations, was opposed by those testifying at a public hearing in October 2019. They said the permit would allow the previous municipal trash landfill to also accept residual waste, a classification that includes construction waste, acid mine drainage sludge, and radioactive shale oil and gas drilling waste.

“DEP carefully reviewed the information contained in the permit applications, asked many questions and were eventually satisfied that Tri-County provided sufficient information to meet the regulatory requirements for approval,” James Miller, director of the DEP Northwest Regional Office, said in a DEP news release. “We gave careful consideration to the comments received from residents and Liberty and Pine townships and made sure Tri-County’s application addressed those concerns.”

Edward R. Vogel, vice president of Vogel Holding Inc., which owns the Tri-County Landfill and another in Butler County, told the Post-Gazette the amount of waste material from shale gas drilling and fracking operations ''depends on the market,” and added that most of that waste is handled by larger disposal firms.

Tri-County has applied for additional permits for water discharges, wetland mitigation and air emissions, and operation of the landfill cannot begin until all are approved. Mr. Vogel said he expects those approvals soon.