20-03-2025
Renewable natural gas plant at Keystone Sanitary Landfill seeks expansion
A renewable natural gas plant at the Keystone Sanitary Landfill will go before Throop Borough Council on Thursday night as it looks to expand by 25%.
The Assai Energy facility at 1150 Marshwood Road, situated inside the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, pipes in gas from decomposing garbage produced at both the Keystone Sanitary Landfill in Dunmore and Throop and the Alliance Landfill in Taylor and Ransom Twp., purifying the landfill gas into pipeline-quality natural gas.
Representatives from Assai Energy, a subsidiary of Houston, Texas-based Archaea Energy, will address Throop officials Thursday seeking a conditional use permit to expand their renewable natural gas facility, according to public notices published March 5 and 12 in The Times-Tribune. London-based BP acquired Archaea in December 2022.
Assai's request comes less than two years after it received approval from the state Department of Environmental Protection to increase its landfill gas processing by 25%.
In August 2023, the DEP allowed Assai to expand its landfill gas processing from 20,000 standard cubic feet per minute to 25,000 — enough to inflate a nearly 298,000-cubic-foot Goodyear Blimp in just under 12 minutes.
The company indicated they are now looking to increase the size of their facility by 25%, Throop zoning and code enforcement officer Andy Hegedus said.
The Assai plant operates by piping in landfill gas from both the Keystone and Alliance landfills, which use networks of pipes extending down into their waste piles to draw the gas out of the ground.
Landfill gas is composed of about 50% methane, 50% carbon dioxide and water vapor; small amounts of nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen; less than 1% hazardous air pollutants and volatile organic compounds, which can react with sunlight to form smog; and traces of inorganic compounds, including pungent-smelling hydrogen sulfide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Hydrogen sulfide produces a rotten egg smell often associated with landfills. As a condition of Assai's air quality plan, the facility cannot allow malodors to escape its property.
Assai purifies the landfill gas until it contains more than 94% methane and then injects it into UGI's distribution system.
The DEP received a permit application for expansion from Assai in December, but the agency sent the application back 'for lack of necessary information such as land approval letters regarding expansion,' DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said in an email.
The DEP has not yet received another application, she said. The department did not have a copy of the rejected application.
The same month Assai applied with DEP, Throop council voted 7-0 to rezone two parcels near the existing Assai plant on Marshwood Road from light industrial to heavy industrial, Hegedus said. All of the surrounding properties, including the landfill, were zoned for heavy industrial uses, he said.
According to Dec. 1 and 8 public notices in The Times-Tribune, the borough rezoned about 11.15 acres across two parcels at 1201 Marshwood Road at the request of Quaker Terra LLC of Dunmore. Quaker Terra purchased the land from Marshwood Enterprises LLC of Throop for $3 million, according to a property transaction recorded July 29. A subsequent 30-year lease agreement between Quaker Terra and Assai Energy that went into effect Aug. 30, which was recorded with the Lackawanna County Recorder of Deeds on Sept. 26, lists Louis DeNaples, who co-owns the landfill with his brother, Dominick DeNaples, as the sole and managing member of Quaker Terra.
That land is currently used by XTRA Lease, a trailer rental and leasing company, whose address is also 1201 Marshwood Road. An employee who answered the phone declined to comment on how their operations would be affected.
While the new heavy industrial zoning would allow Assai's plant as a permitted use, Throop's zoning ordinance requires conditional use approval, which is granted by council, for structures that exceed 30,000 square feet, or that disturb more than 80,000 square feet of earth, Hegedus said. Conditional use approval is recommended by planning, and council has the final say, Hegedus said.
In addition to operating a renewable natural gas plant, Assai received approval from the DEP last month to drill a nearly 3-mile-deep well in Throop to determine whether it would be feasible to permanently store carbon dioxide deep underground. Assai currently burns off the excess carbon dioxide that it removes from landfill gas into the atmosphere, but in 2023, the renewable natural gas producer announced its intent to explore drilling deep underground and injecting the greenhouse gas into the rock formations for permanent storage.
The public hearing for Assai's conditional use permit will begin at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Throop Borough Municipal Building, 436 Sanderson St. Council will hold a special meeting at 6:30 to then vote on the conditional use.
