Keystone Landfill expansion hearing this week in Harrisburg

A more than week-long hearing is expected to start today in Harrisburg to decide if the Keystone Sanitary Landfill in Dunmore and Throop can expand. The hearing in front of the state Environmental Hearing Board centers on an appeal of the state Department of Environmental Protection’s 2021 approval of Keystone Sanitary Landfill’s expansion. Friends of Lackawanna, a citizens’ group formed roughly a decade ago in response to Keystone’s planned growth, wants to halt the expansion and argues the landfill pollutes the community, mars its beauty and diminishes property values. The Sierra Club, an environmental conservation organization, later signed on with FOL’s appeal. Keystone’s planned growth over 42 years is “triple the size” of its last expansion without “any documented reasoning for such,” argued FOL’s attorneys in legal briefs.