PA DEP’s Dredge Plan for Hazleton City Landfill Challenged in 14-day Hearings

The project will permanently entomb massive quantities of hazardous and residual waste dumped on this Site in and below many former strip pits, ensuring strong potential for contamination for many decades to come, while simultaneously introducing fifteen million tons of toxins-laden materials to be used for reclamation purposes.

The people of Hazleton have said “no thanks” to plans to bury the contamination of the Hazleton City Landfill beneath 10 million cubic yards of dredge from rivers and harbors, but the City’s Mayor, an area developer, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania decided to proceed notwithstanding public opposition. A group formed to challenge that decision, Citizen Advocates United to Safeguard the Environment (“CAUSE”), took the case to the Environmental Hearing Board, where 14 days of hearings before an Administrative Law Judge were held in April 2007.
 
The Center has represented CAUSE in the hard fought appeal, which concerns the use of a “general permit” by the developer, Hazleton Creek Properties, LLC, (“HCP”) for placement of dredge, coal ash, and cement and lime kiln dust as fill in mine reclamation.  CAUSE contends that the general permit cannot be used at this site because it was never intended to be used for remediation of hazardous waste contaminated land, and that HCP failed to make the required demonstration that their activities would not pose a potential threat of harm to health or the environment.

Also on appeal is whether a consent order and agreement between DEP, HCP, and Hazleton Redevelopment Authority (“HRA”) is valid under Act 2, PA’s brownfields law, because HRA’s integrated relationship with the City means it would be considered to have contributed to contamination at the Site of the Hazleton City Landfill.

The Site is 277 acres of former strip and deep mined land in the City of Hazleton which was used from the 1950s to the 1980s as a city dump.  Illegal hazardous waste disposal was allowed in addition to household wastes at the Landfill.

At the hearings, CAUSE presented testimony from several of its members about their observations of hundreds of barrels and electrical capacitors containing PCBs around the Site.  A lifelong resident living adjacent to the property also testified to witnessing systematic truck deliveries of drummed wastes for years during his youth and seeing pallet after pallet of the barrels stacked in pits on the site and then backfilled.

EPA reports and reports by the proponents’ own consultants state the presence of hydrochloric and sulfuric acids, PCBs, dioxins, methyl ethyl ketone, heavy metals, phthalates and numerous other industrial solvents. Exposure to such chemicals can cause developmental deficits and or cancer. 

The capture zone of recharge from the HRA site. Layer 1 and Layer 2 are overlain on a base map that also show the location of all wells in the PA database. Square dots are the location of active municipal supply wells.

CAUSE also sponsored testimony of expert witnesses.  Dr. Christopher Duffy, a hydrogeologist, presented results of a computer model showing that the groundwater travels North beneath the Site to areas of surface streams and private wells, and also drains to mine tunnels that empty to a tributary of the Susquehanna River.  This signals a pathway for the contamination already on site and the new heavy metals, solvents, PCBs, dioxins and other pollutants present in the dredge-ash-dust mixture to be placed on site by HCP.  Robert Gadinski, a retired DEP hydrogeologist supervisor, testified to the inadequacies of the testing, or site characterization performed, and the complete lack of any monitoring well drilled to a depth to reach groundwater in the “mine pool” beneath the site.  He posited that the consultants for the HCP and HRA lack any real data about the groundwater in that location nor will their monitoring plan be able to identify contamination in the years to come. Charles Norris, a Colorado-based geochemist and geologist, testified to the manner in which contaminant metals and inorganics can be expected to leach from the dredge-ash-dust mixture after it is placed on the site.  Both he and Mr. Gadinski testified to increased lead or arsenic levels in groundwater at other sites in Pennsylvania where coal ash was a component in state-approved mine reclamations.

Site visit covered ~4.2 miles June 30, 2006 9:15am to 3:00pm (Click on image for larger version.)

Although HCP, HRA and DEP together presented testimony of 10 experts, consultants or technical staff, critical aspects of their testimony were challenged. One area of significance is the fact that none of the witnesses could testify that they had seen or otherwise could prove that underground mine gangways were still unobstructed and functioning as depicted on 50-year-old mine maps. Their conclusions drawn from such maps that groundwater is conveyed away from areas where wells could be affected is therefore highly suspect.

Post-hearing legal briefs are being prepared into July, and then the Board will begin deliberating on the matter.

Center Files Appeal of New Attempt to Circumvent Standards at Hazleton Landfill Site

In October 2006, on behalf of Citizen Advocates United for a Safe Environment (“CAUSE”), the Center appealed a PA DEP Determination of Applicability issued to Hazleton Creek Properties, LLC. (“HCP”) which will allow for the dumping of a wide variety of residual wastes on 277 acres of City of Hazleton land.   HCP will now use DEP’s General Permit for Regulated Fill for road and rail bed building purposes on Site.  HCP will also use Regulated Fill for extensive landfill remediation purposes for which they already held a general permit to use a processed dredge/ash/dust mixture.   Use of this earlier general permit by HCP at the Site is also under challenge by CAUSE (see article below).  For its new General Permit, HCP has identified the specific waste stream for only a very small fraction of the waste it is authorized to bring to the Site.  This means that the chemical contaminants that will come to Hazleton through this permit are completely unknown.  Under the new permit, HCP merely gives DEP 10 days of notice before beginning to dump a new type of waste at the Site under the guise of “regulated fill.” 

The Center’s appeal alleges more than a dozen violations of regulatory requirements, including that the HCP project will have regulated fill used on parkland, and that HCP failed to show that its activities will not harm or present a threat of harm to the health, safety, and welfare of the people or environment of Pennsylvania.

Center Appeals Permit to Pile Dredge-Ash Mix Atop Illegal Hazardous Waste Dump in Hazleton, PA

HAZLETON UPDATE: The parties have completed discovery and exchanged expert witness reports.  Hearings are scheduled for April 2007.

On the edge of the City of Hazleton in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, a 277-acre former anthracite coal strip mine / former landfill is at the center of controversy. The Center represents local residents calling themselves Citizen Advocates United to Safeguard the Environment (CAUSE) in a permit challenge before the PA Environmental Hearing Board. The PA Department of Environmental Protection has issued a General Permit for river and marine dredge material, coal fly ash, and cement and lime kiln dust to be mixed and used to fill the site as a “mine reclamation” project. Hazleton Creek Properties, LLC, is the private developer that obtained coverage under the permit, which allows operations for 9 years and is estimated to result in one hundred train car and truck deliveries daily. The dredge materials are expected to be hauled from the Philadelphia and New York City-New Jersey regions. 

Dr. Duffy and Thomas J. Yurick, Jr., President of CAUSE

The City of Hazleton used the old mine as a municipal dump for several decades. The land has also been used to dispose of industrial and medical wastes, with some observers claiming as many as 60,000 barrels are in the ground, in addition to bulk liquid phase wastes poured into pits. Recent press accounts and photographs also detail the presence of hundreds and perhaps thousands of electrical capacitors containing PCBs at the site. The site narrowly missed categorization as a Superfund site in the 1980’s, although the thoroughness of the investigation is in question.

The dredge project would permanently bury massive quantities of hazardous waste in the ground without the benefit of a liner. The leachate from the waste threatens to degrade area groundwater and tributaries of the Susquehanna River. Additional contamination from heavy metals, hazardous volatile organic compounds, PCBs, and dioxins present in the dredge-ash-dust mixture has also caused great anxiety among area residents.

The appeal was filed on November 21, 2005.

Read the Center’s Public Comments on the Proposed Approval ( 47.71 Kb)