After N.J. complaints, Pa. fines landfill owner

Acting on long-standing complaints about stench coming across the Delaware River, a state agency on Monday fined the owners of Bucks County's aging Tullytown landfill $500,000 for failing to control odors and to treat wastewater promptly.

The Department of Environmental Protection also said Waste Management Inc. had failed to treat water that flows through the mountains of garbage at two other dumps it owns in neighboring Falls Township.

For years, New Jersey residents, particularly those in Florence, have complained about odors borne on the prevailing winds from the west.

Built in the 1970s and 1980s, the landfills are some of the state's busiest, taking in trash from New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, and providing tens of millions of dollars to their host municipalities.

But the dumps also have drawn the ire of the DEP. For instance, the Tullytown landfill had paid out $1.7 million in fines by 2008 related to wastewater-treatment issues. The fines have continued even as the dumps appear to be in their final years.

Houston-based Waste Management, which recently reported quarterly revenue of $3.32 billion, has stopped sending waste to one of the Falls landfills. And last month, the state ordered Waste Management to close the Tullytown dump by May 2017, citing odor complaints and other reasons. The last site is to shut down by February 2019.

"Public concerns regarding odor, noise, bird and aesthetic nuisances, received primarily from New Jersey residents, were a significant factor in the DEP decision to limit waste-disposal operations to no more than two years" at the Tullytown landfill, the DEP's Southeast regional director, Cosmo Servidio, said in a statement.

John Hambrose, a Waste Management spokesman, said the company had significantly ramped up its efforts to contain the smells from Tullytown. Those efforts include moving up its schedule to install plastic covers over the waste, adding soil, no longer dumping sewage sludge at that site, and adding more wells to capture odorous gases.

"We work hard to have a good relationship with our communities," Hambrose said. "And we're going to continue to have good relationships, including with Florence."

Residents with questions or concerns about the landfills can call Waste Management at 215-741-2925 or 609-499-0500.