Slate Belt landfill settles odor violations by agreeing to take illegally dumped debris

An agreement announced Friday aims to settle odor violations at Waste Management’s Grand Central Landfill and clean up an illegal dumpsite outside Bethlehem.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection says its agreement with Waste Management is in lieu of a $50,500 civil penalty for the 2018 violations related to odor and nuisance minimization controls at the landfill in Plainfield Township.

Grand Central will provide landfill space for about 1,000 tons of construction and demolition debris that Michael Stine admitted in 2017 to having dumped at 1600 Freemansburg Ave. in Freemansburg. Stine’s MS Recycling leased space on the property owned by Barnsdale Associates LLC, which locked him out after allegations arose in 2014 that he was bringing in non-permitted material.

Stine in August 2018 was sent to state prison after pleading guilty to charges filed by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office and failing to comply with a court order to clean up 23,455 tons worth of debris prosecutors say he dumped across four Pennsylvania counties. He has since been released, according to a state inmate search.

Stine was living in Fayetteville, North Carolina, at the time of his sentencing. He and his father, Clayton Stine, owned a tree-stump-grinding business on Gravel Hill Road in Lower Mount Bethel Township that caught fire in 1999 and burned for months.

Grand Central was cited by the DEP for violations discovered during inspections over several days in October and November in 2018.

The inspections documented violations with odor control, landfill cover and other requirements of the landfill’s nuisance minimization plan, among other violations, according to the DEP. A Notice of Violation was sent to Grand Central Sanitary Landfill on Nov. 30, 2018, and the landfill has since addressed the issues to the department’s satisfaction.

The value of the landfill space Grand Central has agreed to provide for proper disposal of the illegally dumped waste is equivalent to the monetary amount of the civil penalty, the DEP says. Barnsdale Associates has agreed to cover the costs of transporting the debris to the landfill to maximize the volume to be disposed, state officials said.

“This agreement was structured so Grand Central can be held accountable for these violations and so that the community can also benefit” Mike Bedrin, director of DEP’s Northeast Regional Office in Wilkes-Barre, said in a statement Friday. “First and foremost, the landfill is required to make adjustments to its nuisance minimization plan, including odor control to address its violations, and second, an illegal dumping site in the Lehigh Valley will be cleaned-up.”

Waste Management is “thankful for the opportunity to support DEP’s clean-up of the MS Recycling site,” according to a statement from Grand Central Manager Joe Statile.

The landfill operator says the violations cited by DEP included alleged offsite odors that resulted from far-above-normal rainfall and weather-related construction delays at Grand Central, and from conditions observed during facility inspections. The conditions observed during the facility inspections have been corrected and the agreement closes the violations, the company notes.

“Two years ago, the area received more than 72 inches of rain,” Statile stated. “Average rainfall in the Slate Belt is 48 inches. The abnormally high rainfall increased the amount of landfill gas naturally produced in our landfill and delayed the expansion of our landfill gas collection system.

“Despite our best efforts, these conditions inconvenienced our neighbors and resulted in the DEP notices,” he continued. “We’ve made many adjustments to make sure we do not have a repeat of this situation.”

Statile said that instead of conducting gas collection expansion projects annually, the work now is conducted twice a year. The landfill says it also has increased the number of contractors certified to handle this specialized construction work.

“We’re proud of the changes we’ve made and our operating record since 2018 and know that our neighbors have noticed the improvement,” Statile stated, noting the landfill’s systems performed well when Tropical Storm Isaias brought more than seven inches of rain to the site on Aug. 3.

Under the agreement, Grand Central has one year to complete the disposal.

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Kurt Bresswein may be reached at [email protected].