Pennsylvania DEP reaches agreement with Keystone Landfill for violations

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has reached an agreement with Keystone Sanitary Landfill in Lackawanna County for violations related to leachate management and groundwater impacts, reports the Times Leader.

The Consent Order and Agreement calls for Keystone, in lieu of paying a $112,905 civil penalty, to provide landfill space for approximately 2,500 tons of construction and demolition (C&D) waste dumped illegally, by another party, at a site in nearby Taylor Borough.

The amount of landfill space agreed to by Keystone is equivalent to the monetary amount of the civil penalty, DEP said. Keystone has one year to complete the project.

“Keystone is being held accountable for these violations and an illegal dump site will be cleaned up,” Mike Bedrin, director of DEP’s Northeast Regional Office in Wilkes-Barre, said in a Dec. 11 press release announcing the agreement. “The landfill has made adjustments to its leachate management plan and has also fixed a previous source of groundwater degradation.”

DEP said it discovered the violations during an evaluation of the landfill’s ground water monitoring and an investigation of its leachate storage lagoons. Leachate leaked from a liner in a lagoon and impacted groundwater. DEP also said Keystone stored leachate in the lagoons above regulatory limits, which was in violation of the Solid Waste Management Act.

DEP added that the violations have been addressed and Keystone updated its leachate management plan to include re-constructing the lagoons and lowering the amount of leachate stored in them.

The acceptance and disposal of the illegally dumped waste is part of a Community Environmental Project that DEP said it has been discussing with the Keystone.

In 2017, Michael Stine of Northampton County admitted to dumping C&D debris two years earlier at a private business along Keyser Avenue in Taylor. The state Office of Attorney General prosecuted Stine, but the waste has not been removed. The property owner has agreed to pay the costs of transporting the debris to the landfill, DEP said.