While the Saint Clair Borough Council is appealing the recent decision by the state Department of Environmental Protection approving the Blythe Recycling and Demolition Site landfill application, the battle for the landfill is not a new one.
Blythe Township first submitted an application to DEP to construct the waste facility in February 2004.
In the most recent decision on July 16, DEP issued a permit allowing Blythe Township to construct and operate a municipal waste facility, also known as BRADS, on 252 acres along Burma Road, overturning a previous decision.
The proposed site is 2,400 feet from Wolf Creek Reservoir, the drinking water source for Pottsville, Mechanicsville, Palo Alto, Port Carbon, Saint Clair and parts of Blythe, East Norwegian, New Castle and Norwegian townships.
It's proposed that the lined landfill will only accept construction and demolition waste and have a 1,500-ton daily volume.
The application the township originally submitted in 2004 has gone through a series of reviews, including an environmental assessment, also called a "harms-benefits analysis" and a technical review.
According to records at the Saint Clair borough hall, revisions on the application were submitted to DEP in March 2006.
A public hearing on the application was held Dec. 6, 2006, at Pottsville Area's D.H.H. Lengel Middle School Auditorium. Of the 39 people who provided testimony, most spoke out against it.
In a letter dated April 11, 2008, from William Tomayko, waste management program manager at DEP's Northeast Regional Office, to Albert J. Lubinsky, chairman of the Blythe Township supervisors, DEP denied the application, noting deficiencies in it.
The letter also stated that the department issued a pre-denial letter April 27, 2007, that advised the township that BRADS needed to fully respond to issues in order for the review process to move forward, which they did not.
Among the issues addressed were the permit term, with BRADS modifying the application to request a 20-year permit term from a previous 10-year permit term, covering an estimated 19 years of disposal life.
DEP stated that the application did not contain any type of formal comparison between both term scenarios.
Other issues included air quality impacts, mine subsidence issues, impacts to the environment and land use and there not being a firm leachate disposal plan, material generated from decomposed waste.
Despite the terminating of the review and denial of the application, the township appealed.
As the township fought to get approval for its permit, a group of concerned citizens opposed the project. They called themselves SC FORCE - Saint Clair Families Organized to Retain a Clean Environment.
In August 2011, DEP approved Phase I of the township's permit application, due directly to a decision by Michael Krancer, DEP's secretary, according to newspaper archives.
At that time, the borough asked Neal P. Goodman, D-123, U.S. Rep. Tim Holden, D-17, and state Sen. David Argall, R-29, to meet with Krancer on the issue.
Once Goodman and Holden met with Krancer, they were promised to be kept up to date with new developments on the permit.
At the November borough council meeting, the borough said it received a letter from DEP announcing that it received supplemental application information from the township Oct. 24 and that the application had entered into the technical review phase.
Before the application was approved two weeks ago, the last communication between DEP and the borough was a letter from council President James D. Larish to DEP dated Jan. 30 that said the borough did not believe that the Phase II part of the application was adequate for many reasons.
Attached to that letter were comments from borough engineer Brian Baldwin of Alfred Benesch & Co., Pottsville.
In his comments, Baldwin said the revised application for the proposed landfill submitted to DEP in October failed to adequately protect the environmental resources and should be denied.
Baldwin's comments state that the township fails to address dust, odors, impacts to the quality of the surrounding environment, visual impacts, increased truckload traffic on local roads throughout its construction, disposal life and during temporary off-site leachate disposal since there are only two approach routes and how wetlands will be effected, among others.
"The applicant cannot say with certainty that the watertable that supplies water to the reservoir will not be in contact with the landfill liner," Baldwin said in the report.
After the letter was sent, the borough said that it had heard nothing on the landfill application until it was randomly approved two weeks ago.
"All of these decisions were made behind closed doors," Goodman said in a previous story from July 18. "We learned of the approval through an email late Monday afternoon."
Upon approval, Lubinsky told The Republican-Herald, "That's good. That's nice. But right now I have no comment on it," and that he did not know what the time frame would be for construction and the start of operations.
In the July 16 release, Tomayko said that the agency's review shows that the township met the regulatory application requirements for the permit to be issued, while Colleen Connolly, a spokeswoman for DEP's Northeast Regional Office, told The Republican-Herald the township also met financial assurance obligations required under DEP's municipal waste regulations to operate the 109-acre lined disposal area, which will include leachate collection and treatment and gas management systems.
As the fight continues with the township's application now approved and the borough appealing the decision, Goodman, Holden and Argall said they would continue to ensure local concerns are heard by the proper officials.
Larish said that the borough has so far spent approximately $700,000 in attorney and engineering fees.