Bethlehem Landfill expansion awarded preliminary township approval, state’s OK needed - lehighvalleylive.com

Bethlehem Landfill expansion awarded preliminary township approval, state’s OK needed - lehighvalleylive.com

Lower Saucon Township Council on Wednesday night granted preliminary approval for Bethlehem Landfill to add 86 acres of disposal area.

The expansion still needs to be permitted by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, as well as final approval from the township.

A vocal group of township residents kept up their opposition to the expansion ahead of the council’s 3-2 vote. The preliminary land development approval also covers consolidation of lots purchased by the Bethlehem Landfill Co. for the expansion.

Opponents seized on dozens of comments from the township’s Hanover Engineering consultant about the application expansion and 14 waivers requested by the company under township land development rules.

Landfill attorney Maryanne Starr Garber, however, disputed residents’ sentiments that those engineering comments and waiver requests represent “deficiencies” in the application. The waivers are the same ones the landfill has requested on all prior expansions, she said. This latest is the fifth expansion of the 2335 Applebutter Road facility.

“They are largely requested because of the nature of the development and the DEP oversight associated with them,” the attorney said.

The township council on Aug. 30 rezoned 275.7 acres adjacent to the landfill to permit waste disposal on the property, which the landfill company owns. That approval makes landfills and waste disposal facilities permitted uses in the township’s Light Industrial area. Prior to the vote, zoning hearing board approval was needed for a landfill. (A Christmas week vote a year ago to rezone the same land required council approval of the landfill expansion as a conditional use, but that the rezoning was overturned in Northampton County Court.)

Phase V will disturb 171 acres in all, said landfill engineer Joseph McDowell, of Martin & Martin Inc. The plan conserves 193 acres to protect the land from future development.

“Nothing will change in terms of the day-to-day operations and business of the landfill,” McDowell said. “The expansion that we are seeking an approval of will simply allow the business to continue to operate in Lower Saucon Township.”

Nor will the peak height of the landfill change from the current 725 feet above mean sea level, McDowell said.

Plans include planting 4,000 trees atop or adjacent to the expansion’s new disposal cells, once they’ve been filled with trash and capped, according to McDowell. Responding to a question from Councilwoman Priscilla deLeon, McDowell was unable to estimate how many trees are being removed for the expansion.

Council’s August rezoning vote lifted restrictions on landfill use for former parcels the landfill owns known as the former Helms and Redington properties. The City of Bethlehem and Lower Saucon had agreed to those restrictions in 1994, following the city’s sale of the landfill to what was then Eastern Waste of Bethlehem Inc. These restrictions were meant to create a natural buffer between the landfill and the Lehigh River and private property. Township residents sued the township over the 1994 conservation easements, saying they can’t be unilaterally lifted without court approval.

Wednesday’s vote follows a contentious election in which three Democratic candidates for council — deLeon, Laura Ray and Victoria Opthof-Cordaro — won four-year terms over Republican incumbent council members Sandra Yerger and Mark Inglis and newcomer Susan Blair.

Yerger joined deLeon in opposing Wednesday’s preliminary approval but did not elaborate. Inglis joined council President Jason Banonis and Councilman Thomas Carocci in granting approval.

Banonis and Inglis both sought to paint the 16 or so residents who spoke out during the meeting as a vast minority of the township’s roughly 11,000 residents. The rest don’t care or support the expansion, these council members argued.

The expansion opponents who spoke Wednesday raised concerns about groundwater contamination from the expansion, despite the DEP oversight and use of state-of-the-art liners and systems to collect leachate and other stormwater on-site. Two opponents weren’t permitted to speak because they aren’t township residents or taxpayers — Claire Sadler is executive director of the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor that oversees the D&L Trail that runs near the northern border of the landfill’s property, and Joseph Bubba is an attorney representing the tax-exempt St. Luke’s University Health Network.

Banonis pointed, as he did in August, to the financial benefits of the landfill.

Under a revised agreement for the township to host the landfill, once the Phase V permit is final, the township’s host fees would rise from $6.90 to $11 per ton of municipal waste and wastewater treatment sludge disposed at the landfill and from $9.97 to $13.57 for residual waste. Even without that escalation, Banonis said, annual revenue to Lower Saucon from the landfill totals about $2.6 million — about 30% of the municipal budget — and is the second-highest source of township funding behind its earned income tax.

With that “alternative funding source,” Banonis on Wednesday moved to reduce Lower Saucon’s 2024 general fund property tax from 4.39 mills by 0.75 of a mill or 17%. The tax cut approved 4-1 will require drawing about $345,000 from the township’s cash reserves that are in the range of $9-10 million, township officials said. deLeon voted against the cut and said the new Democrat-majority council seated in January plans to reopen the 2024 budget that gained approval Wednesday night.

The official election results show deLeon was the leading vote-getter with 2,423 votes followed by 2,346 for Ray and 2,326 for Opthof-Cordaro. Blair took 1,554 votes; Yerger, 1,546; and Inglis, 1,535.

Northampton County’s Election Commission Board on Nov. 21 certified the Nov. 7 election despite an error across all of the county’s voting machines. Lower Saucon council had asked township residents to fill out a survey on the township website, lowersaucontownship.org, about any issues they had on Election Day. Township Manager Mark Hudson on Wednesday reported receiving 26 responses, some of which were “inappropriate” but which also included some reports of issues at the polls and some saying they had no problems at all.

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Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com.