Decades-old settlement previously barred Keystone Sanitary Landfill from sending leachate through Throop
A nearly 36-year-old settlement could have barred the Keystone Sanitary Landfill from sending its treated leachate through Throop as part of a new proposal from the landfill, but a subsequent amendment and $500,000 payment potentially waived that restriction several years later.
Landfill officials will present their plans Wednesday during a special meeting at the Throop Civic Center as they seek approval to send their treated leachate, which is the liquid that percolates through garbage piles, through Throop’s sanitary sewer system where it would be further treated at the Lackawanna River Basin Sewer Authority’s plant on Boulevard Avenue in Throop. The Louis and Dominick DeNaples-owned landfill in Dunmore and Throop currently treats its leachate on site using a process called reverse osmosis — forcing the liquid under high pressure through a membrane that extracts contaminants — and directs the wastewater to Pennsylvania American Water’s treatment plant in South Scranton.
Both borough council and the Lackawanna River Basin Sewer Authority, or LRBSA, would have to approve those plans before Keystone could reroute its reverse osmosis-treated leachate, with borough officials emphasizing that no decision has been made. Wednesday’s meeting is solely to bring in the public for information and input on the proposal. As part of the project, the landfill said it would completely rehabilitate Throop’s sanitary sewer line, including relining it in its entirety, removing root infiltration and fixing broken joints, Throop Council President Rich Kucharski said last week.
However, a 1989 settlement signed by the landfill, Throop borough and the Throop Property Owners Association, or TPOA, established terms for the landfill during its Phase I expansion, including how it must treat its leachate. Keystone’s Phase III expansion is now underway, which allows it to continue hauling in garbage for the next four decades, tripling its volume of waste by adding 94 million tons, or 188 billion pounds, of garbage.
The 1989 settlement ended 2-year-old litigation against the landfill. In 1987, the TPOA appealed the former state Department of Environmental Resources’ decision to allow the landfill to remain open beyond its scheduled April 14, 1987, closure date, taking the case before the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board, according to the May 19, 1987, edition of The Scranton Times. The following year, Throop Borough Council voted to join the property owners in their appeal, as well as joining the association in filing a separate lawsuit against the landfill under the federal Clean Streams Act, The Scranton Times reported on April 26, 1988.
All three parties reached a settlement agreement on July 17, 1989, which was recorded with the Lackawanna County Recorder of Deeds the following day. Among the stipulations for the landfill, a section on leachate required it to collect all leachate immediately, pretreat it and send it to the Scranton Sewage Plant. It also stipulates, “None of the leachate shall be disposed of through the Borough of Throop, nor through sewer pipes located in Throop.”
Throop solicitor and borough Manager Louis Cimini pointed to a subsequent amendment to the agreement signed May 24, 1993, as well as a clause in the original agreement allowing it to be amended. According to the 1993 document, the property owners association and borough agreed that both parties were “released from and no longer bound by the terms of the agreement” after they received a $500,000 trust fund from the landfill, which had diverted an additional $1 for every ton of waste it collected to that fund.
“It would need to be discussed,” Cimini said of the 1993 document. “I think the argument can be made, but … again, we’re nowhere near that.”
Cimini stressed that Wednesday’s meeting is to bring in the public to hear from the landfill.
“How we’ve jumped down the road this far, it’s not what was intended,” he said.
Keystone Sanitary Landfill consultant Al Magnotta said in a text that the landfill will address the 1989 agreement during the meeting.
Cimini also pointed to the quality of the pretreated leachate in 2025 compared to 1989.
“The purpose for the public presentation is so that the public can hear firsthand what we understand to be a monumental difference between 1989 leachate and leachate treated through reverse osmosis,” Cimini said. “The meeting on March 26 is simply for the landfill to explain their request to the public, and that’s it.”
Pat Clark, a leader of grassroots group Friends of Lackawanna, which formed in 2014 in opposition of the landfill and its now-approved Phase III expansion, advocated for the borough to eventually deny the proposal.
“The area should be tired of this landfill getting whatever it wants, whenever it wants, from whoever it wants, regardless of past agreements or actual performance,” he said.
Friends of Lackawanna appealed the landfill’s June 3, 2021, Phase III expansion approval in July 2021 to the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board, and Clark expects a decision soon.
Keystone previously applied with the state Department of Environmental Protection on Dec. 18, 2019, to discharge its treated leachate directly into Little Roaring Brook and Eddy Creek, though it later removed Eddy Creek from those plans. Under that proposal, the landfill would have discharged up to 200,000 gallons of treated leachate per day into Little Roaring Brook, which is a Lackawanna River tributary, just off East Drinker Street near Derrig Street. The landfill withdrew its application in July.
Wednesday’s meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Throop Civic Center, 500 Sanderson St.
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