DUNMORE — After a contentious meeting Monday, borough council approved a $15.63 million agreement with Keystone Sanitary Landfill that could turn into a $191.7 million agreement over nearly 50 years if the state approves its expansion.
It was the third draft of such an agreement put before the public. Most residents who attended opposed it and shouted their disappointment with council members after the vote.
The agreement locks the borough into a contract that nearly triples its host municipality fees to $1.20 per ton of garbage on Dec. 1, $1.30 on Dec. 1, 2015, $1.40 in 2016 and $1.50 in 2017.
The fee would ratchet up to $1.51 in 2018 and a penny a year on top of that every year afterward. The agreement contains no expiration date, which many borough residents saw as a fatal flaw.
The agreement also includes $100,000 per year for the Dunmore School District for 10 years, after which the parties agreed to take another look at the payment to the district “for any additional contribution.”
Other terms include free borough and school district garbage disposal at Keystone, forgiveness of all the borough’s potential for debt for past disposal, available air space reserved for Dunmore and a definition of the landfill as a “pre-existing landfill” to ensure Keystone a more favorable interpretation of the borough’s zoning ordinance. Read the full agreement here.
The vote was nearly unanimous. Only council member Timothy Burke voted no, telling the crowd he couldn’t in good conscience vote for an agreement he believed could in any way help the landfill’s bid for expansion.
Council member Salvatore Verrastro framed the decision as a gamble. Dunmore’s refusal to raise the fee might not stop the expansion. He fears getting stuck with another roughly 50 years of garbage while the borough only receives the state-mandated minimum of $0.41 per ton.
“I’m making a decision for the future no matter how I vote, no matter what I do,” he said during the heated public comment period before the vote.
During public comment Monday night, resident after resident took the podium to point out the agreement’s weaknesses — it doesn’t approach Throop’s host fee of $2.02 per ton and is missing key environmental and safety provisions they found in Throop’s agreement.
The agreement should cover economic, safety, environmental and liability issues, said Michele Dempsey, a core member of the Friends of Lackawanna group formed to fight the expansion.
Like many who spoke, she wondered specifically why council members couldn’t obtain a better deal.
“I think we have more leverage than we think we do,” she said.
Council members and attorney Bill Jones, who negotiated the agreement, said landfill owners Louis and Dominick DeNaples denied all attempts to argue for better terms during these negotiations and in earlier attempts.
“They were not interested in increasing the depth and width of the document at that time, and they still aren’t,” Mr. Jones said.
The landfill is under no legal obligation to negotiate a new host fee during this expansion process, according to earlier statements from DEP officials.
Council member Paul Nardozzi told the crowd that previous council members had attempted to negotiate a better deal with the DeNaples brothers even before the 1999 agreement that gave Dunmore only the state minimum fee. They denied those requests but offered to help the borough in other ways, he said.
Discussion devolved into shouting at one point, when Mayor Patrick “Nibs” Loughney took the podium and pointed to members of the audience, accusing them of snide comments toward Dunmore officials.
No one in the room Monday night fully understands what the agreement means to DEP as it reviews the expansion.
Two weeks ago, DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said the DEP would not see any agreement as a form of consent. Before he retired at the end of October, former waste management program chief William Tomayko, who held the position for 35 years, said the most important part of the harms-benefits analysis is proving the landfill can reduce or mitigate potential harms.
“Landfills, if they’re asking for a permit, have to identify the harms and how they’re going to deal with those harms ... and then identify the benefits of the landfill operation to the community,” Mr. Tomayko said.
He said landfill regulations require DEP to deal with the harms first before moving on to benefits.
“If they don’t do the mitigation to our satisfaction, they don’t go any further,” he said.
But that leaves residents wondering why the DeNaples brothers would choose to negotiate a new contract fee now, when council members say they’ve been unwilling to do for years. Many fear it’s only to pad the “benefits” section. "(Mr. DeNaples) wouldn't come to us if he didn’t need something in the first place,” Dunmore resident Jack McGrath said. “Why didn’t he send someone down here to answer a question or two?”
Contact the writer: bgibbons@timesshamrock.com, @bgibbonsTT on Twitter
