Decades-old settlement 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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New York Post
27-05-2025
- New York Post
Ohio's proposed ‘Natural Family Month' faces backlash from LGBTQ parents
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Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Yahoo
Trump's ‘white genocide' claims ignore the real danger facing South Africa
Amid green hills near the South African town of Levubu, Louis Cloete and his wife, Ina, raised their children on a farm that had been in the family for three generations. This lushly fertile region, just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, is a heartland for growing tropical fruit and nuts. After they retired and their son and two daughters left home, Louis and Ina stayed on the farm as tenants. Their idyll ended one afternoon in April 2022 when intruders burst in and attacked the pair, then aged 74 and 66. The attackers murdered Louis and Ina, white farmers, before ransacking the homestead for valuables and setting it ablaze. The corpses of the couple were later found burnt beyond recognition inside the ruins of their home. All around lay the charred remains of the life they had made together, including dozens of damaged hunting trophies in what was once the living room. Louis and Ina were residing on a remote farm in a country with one of the world's highest rates of violent crime, but relations said they had always felt safe. 'I often raised the issue with her of them being in a vulnerable situation all by themselves on the farm,' Ina's brother, Jurie Schoeman, later told the Sunday Times of South Africa. 'She was positive, she got along with local people,' he said, adding that the couple were both fluent in the Venda language spoken in the area. The fate of Louis and Ina – and many others like them – has taken on a new significance since Donald Trump's highly charged encounter with Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president, in the Oval Office on Wednesday. Trump challenged his visitor about the supposed persecution of white South Africans in general and white farmers in particular, producing a sheaf of news stories and a carefully prepared video. Although he did not use the word during this meeting, Trump has previously spoken of an alleged 'genocide' of white farmers in South Africa. In a stroke of political theatre, Trump held up the news reports of various crimes committed against white South Africans and summarised their contents. 'Death, death – horrible – death, death,' he intoned as he went through each example. Ramaphosa, by contrast, calmly and deliberately rebutted the president's charges. So what is the truth? How should the world view Trump's accusations? One chilling fact is that about 75 people are murdered in South Africa every day, compared with fewer than two in England and Wales, even though their respective populations are similar. The South African police recorded a total of 27,621 murders in 2023-24 – that amounts to some 45 people per 100,000. Yet black South Africans comprised the great majority of these victims. The number of killings known to have taken place on farms, meanwhile, is relatively low. 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Miami Herald
17-05-2025
- Miami Herald
Sunday's Haitian Flag Day. But the mood leading up to May 18 is anything but celebratory
Two days before one of Haiti's biggest national holidays, the streets in the heart of Miami's Haitian community are unusually quiet. Few cars move up and down Northeast Second Avenue flying giant-size blue and red flags as has been customary and few patronize the sidewalk vendors selling Flag Day T-shirts, caps and bandannas. 'Last year, there were more people who came. This year, things are slow,' Farilia Antoine, an artist and vendor said as she was arranging her wares on a table along Northeast Second Avenue and 59th Street. The mood, according to vendors and the few seen out venturing in Little Haiti on Friday, could best be summed up by a mural not far from where Antoine stood, located at the southern end of the Little Haiti Cultural Complex. 'Anmweyyy,' the all too common cry of unbearable pain, screams in bold letters in Haitian Creole as a hand with a broken chain grabs the country's bi-color flag. Underneath, the phrase, 'Haiti Is Suffocating,' is written in Creole. May 18 has long been a celebration of Haitian identity and heritage, and the country as a nation. The date commemorates the creation of the first Haitian flag in 1803 in the town of Arcahaie, where the white was reportedly ripped from a French flag and the blue and red stripes were sewn together by heroine Catherine Flon to represent the union of Blacks and mulattoes, the two main groups in Haiti's fight for independence from France. It's a day that usually overflows with pride and celebration that marks Haiti's path from enslaved nation to free Black republic and symbolizes Haitians collective identity. But as the Caribbean nation suffocates under the lawlessness of gang rule, and Haitians in the United States face the threat of being returned under President Donald Trump's mass deportation promise, many are approaching the moment with mixed feelings, and a mood that is more somber than celebratory. 'I don't feel at ease; with the way things are in Haiti I can't be at ease, at all,' said Linda Louis, strolling in front of the Little Haiti Cultural Complex. Originally from Croix-des-Bouquets, Louis, 42, said 'it brings tears to my eyes' when she thinks of Haiti, and her once bustling community on the eastern outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Like the town of Arcahaie, which has been made off-limits by the widespread violence, Croix-des-Bouquets is now controlled by violent gangs that are burning businesses, shuttering schools and attacking cities. 'I can't even go to my country,' she said. Things are not necessarily better here. Louis, who has two teenagers, a preteen and her mother living in Haiti, arrived in South Florida two years ago from Brazil after making the dangerous 7,000 mile trek on foot with her two young sons, now ages 5 and 4. Both kids donned the flag's colors on their T-shirts and heads, the younger in a bandanna and the older in a construction paper crown of blue and red. 'They are proud to be Haitian,' Louis said. 'They wanted another T-shirt to put on for Sunday, but I don't have any money.' Like many of the more than half million Haitians in the U.S. currently living under the threat of deportation back to Haiti, Louis says she is feeling the financial and emotional weight of the Trump administration's decision to roll back immigration protections for the community despite their homeland's turmoil. 'I don't see clearly yet,' she said, adding that while her kids are basking in their pride over being Haitians, she doesn't feel the celebratory spirit. Conflicting emotions over Haiti Flag Day Evelyne Bital, who moved to the U.S. over 30 years ago and is involved in promoting Haitian culture, has mixed emotions when it comes to May 18. She is approaching the day with both 'pride' and 'a heavy heart.' She's proud of how Haiti achieved nationhood, by defeating the world's most powerful army at the time, but her heart is heavy 'because of what our country has become now.' 'I feel that we should be in a better place. The country should be flourishing and doing way better than where we are now,' said Bital, who recently opened a store, Lobey Art and Travel, in Little Haiti to showcase the culture. 'So I have a heavy heart just commemorating that day, but I want to keep our pride alive, so that's why I opened the store because I want people to continue seeing what we can do.' Still, for many Haitians, May 18 is somber reminder of what has been lost and how their once vibrant nation is now facing collapse. 'How is it that we go from a very thriving nation, where, at one point, Haiti was one of the main tourism countries in the world, everybody was going to Haiti just to enjoy a piece of the Caribbean, to now, where, for the most part, the people who are destroying that particular country are the people themselves?' said Nelda Augustin, owner of N'Tea Shop inside the Caribbean Marketplace in Little Haiti. 'So how could one not feel disappointed? It's disappointing.' She hopes Haitians use the commemoration to do some self-reflecting. 'Don't look into the next person and ask why they're not helping us, or what did they do to us, or what is wrong with the rest of the world,' Augustin said. 'The message needs to be self-reflection. You need to look within first and try to find a reason as to why. We need to reflect on ourselves and find a way to solve our own problems.' During an evening celebration at Sounds of Little Haiti on Friday night, the new head of the Little Haiti Cultural Center, Dasha Saintremy, asked the crowd for a moment of silence for Haiti. READ MORE: France forced Haiti to pay for independence. 200 years later, should there be restitution? The evening had featured a live performance by Haiti's legendary Tropicana Orchestra, whose longevity after 62 years has made it one of the country's most popular musical groups. Its distinct big band sound and rhythms attracted both young and old on Friday night including Haitian konpa fans pushing walkers. 'There used to be beautiful Haitian Flag Day celebrations in Haiti when I was young,' Milva Celeger, 89, said as she looked at the young people in the crowd dancing to music by the street band Rara Lakay. But in spite of the music, the mood was still somewhat solemn, with some Haitians saying they are not yet ready to dance. 'All of the flags being waved in the U.S. is not enough,' Djenane St. Fleur, the vice president of the Haitian American Chamber in Broward, said. 'We need to do more, we need to be more focused and be more impactful doing the same thing, the dancing, the food, but we need to be impactful.' Staying home this year Haitians have tried to bring out the joy this month, from art galleries to children's readings to galas. But community leaders and event organizers acknowledge that a lot of people are not going out. For some its economic, while for others it's fears of immigration raids, whether real or rumored in the world of social media postings. The month's biggest event, the Haitian Compas Festival, for example, downsized to a smaller venue this year from Bayfront Park to The NoMi Village in North Miami. Ticket pre-sales failed to take off and regular attendees began canceling over fears of traveling to Florida, some say. Still, some made the trip anyway for the celebration of Haitian music and culture on Saturday. Delphine Moss, 30, who lives in Paris, has been vacationing in Orlando since the end of April. She made the trip down to Miami for Compas Fest, she said, in order to soak in the culture. 'I love Haitian Flag Day and I love the culture,' said Moss, who was born in France of Haitian descent. 'Haitian Flag Day is a powerful reminder of who we are as a people — resilient, proud and rooted in the fight for freedom,' North Miami Mayor Alix Desulme said, noting that his city has sponsored a multitude of events to celebrate this month. As both mayor and a Haitian American, Desulme said he hears his residents' concerns about the immigration crackdown and feels their frustrations over what's unfolding back home in Haiti. His own family hails from Arcahaie, where once again the Haitian government will not be able to travel to celebrate Flag Day because of gangs' control of roads. 'The political instability, the violence, and the lack of basic resources are devastating and what's more painful is the lack of coordinated support from the international community, especially from the United States,' Desulme said about Haiti. But even with the challenges facing Haiti, Desulme said he shares the hope that Haitians will come together 'not just in celebration of our flag, but in a renewed commitment to advocate for our people both here and back in Haiti.'
