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The Keystone Sanitary Landfill agreed to a $15,000-plus settlement with the state Department of Environmental Protection after it regularly stored too much leachate in its lagoons in 2023 and 2024.
Landfill President Louis DeNaples signed a consent order and agreement with the DEP on March 5 that requires the landfill in Dunmore and Throop to pay a civil penalty of $15,487.50 for exceeding the 25% total leachate storage capacity at its lagoons. Leachate is the liquid that percolates through garbage piles. Landfill Business Manager Dan O’Brien and attorney Jeffrey Belardi also signed on behalf of Keystone. The agreement requires Keystone to continue corrective actions to limit similar violations in the future, the DEP said.
The settlement
In June, the DEP reviewed leachate storage amounts at the Louis and Dominick DeNaples-owned landfill’s east and west lagoons and the “Former Dunmore Fuel Oil Tank,” finding that “KSL stored leachate in excess of 25% of its total leachate storage capacity on a regular basis,” according to the agreement. Leachate storage totals exceeded the maximum limit every month from October 2023 to June, according to the DEP. As of Sept. 30, the landfill had reduced its leachate to below 25% capacity.
The storage violated state code and the Solid Waste Management Act, according to the agreement.
The DEP sent the landfill a notice of violation June 11 that documented the violation and asked it to submit a plan and schedule to correct and prevent the violation. Keystone’s response 10 days later listed measures it had already instituted to address the issue, including using temporary additional storage in aboveground tanks and hauling leachate off-site to permitted treatment facilities. The landfill also noted plans including installing a rain tarp to divert stormwater away from the leachate collection systems.
As part of the settlement, Keystone cannot challenge or deny the department’s findings on the matter.
According to a compliance history included in the landfill’s April operating permit renewal application, it was previously cited for the same violations, including on April 12, 2022, and Sept. 20, 2018.
The new settlement comes a year after the landfill agreed to pay a $575,000 civil penalty in March 2024 that was the culmination of 14 odor-related violations since January 2023, close to 1,000 odor complaints in seven months and at least 70 instances of DEP staff detecting offsite landfill gas and leachate odors attributed to Keystone. The DEP touted the nearly $600,000 fine as the largest it had issued to Keystone.
That settlement required 26 corrective actions to mitigate odors pertaining to leachate storage, leachate treatment and temporary and permanent covers for waste piles.
New odor complaints
Last month, the DEP sent Keystone a letter notifying it of numerous complaints related to landfill-associated odors. In the Feb. 18 letter, the DEP said it had received more than 195 complaints since Jan. 14 from residents in Throop, Dunmore, Olyphant, Scranton and Jefferson Twp., with 97 odor complains Jan. 31 alone. Three DEP staff members were dispatched to investigate the complaints that day; all three detected offsite odors attributed to landfill operations, according to the letter.
The DEP received an additional 12 odor complaints Feb. 3. A member of DEP’s emergency response team conducted a complaint investigation that day and detected offsite odors attributable to landfill operations in community areas. While the emergency response member did not enter the landfill, the odors detected were similar to Keystone’s leachate and landfill gas odors, according to the letter.
The letter gave the landfill 10 days to submit a plan and schedule addressing the control and minimization of its odors.
The landfill responded Feb. 28, saying it was not the source of the 97 complaints Jan. 31. More so, of the 195 complaints, only a small number were verified by DEP staff, and four were incorrectly identified, business Manager Dan O’Brien wrote in the response letter, pointing to a UGI gas leak.
During Keystone’s offsite odor patrols, especially when barometric pressure is relatively low, landfill personnel have noticed a significant increase in sewer gas odors, which are more prevalent during the winter when traps on storm inlets have no water in them to create a seal, O’Brien said.
“There is no question that KSL is an easy target,” he wrote. “Anytime there is any kind of odor within a 3-mile radius it is automatically assumed that it must be caused by the landfill.”
He pointed to other potential sources of odor in the area, including “numerous industrial facilities, an asphalt plant, solid waste transfer stations, public and privately owned wastewater treatment facilities, a mulch processing facility, a meat packing plant, the community’s sewage, stormwater and combined sewer overflow systems … natural gas leaks, utility pipeline repair/replacement … stormwater retention basins, the major highway system surrounding the landfill, and off-site abandoned mine operations.”
“The situation is further exacerbated by Friends of Lackawanna encouraging anyone and everyone to call PADEP when there is an odor even when the complainant is not experiencing the odor,” he wrote, including screenshots of Jan. 12 and 31 Facebook posts by the landfill opposition group that include the DEP’s complaint line phone number for logging odors.
Pat Clark, a leader of Friends of Lackawanna, which formed in 2014 to oppose Keystone and its now-approved Phase III expansion, contended the landfill has had longstanding issues with leachate storage. He cited the 2024 consent order and the 14 odor violations contained in it, which the landfill agreed it would not challenge or deny the truth, accuracy or validity of the DEP’s assertions.
“People take the time out of their day to call in the odors; the landfill thinks we make it up, yet the department continues to verify these are landfill odors, and the landfill says, ‘Hey, it’s not us,’” Clark said. “To continually treat the citizens of Northeast Pennsylvania with such disregard that you’re telling us we don’t understand that the smell is coming from the landfill continues to be disingenuous at best and insulting at worst.”
Keystone said it will review and evaluate its nuisance minimization and control plan, that it has completed tasks in its previous consent order to significantly reduce fugitive odors, that it is installing liners and shallow collectors, that it added a product to a concentrate tank to reduce hydrogen sulfide emissions — a rotten egg smell — and that it is working with a vendor to design and construct a vapor capture system for two new leachate holding tanks.
