PRESS RELEASE
March 28, 2024
Modern Landfill Secretly Disposed of Millions of Gallons of Untreated Wastewater
(Wrightsville, PA) On March 25, 2024 the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania ordered Modern Landfill of York, PA, which is owned and operated by Republic Services, to stop hiding the fact that it is sending millions of gallons of concentrated wastes containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) (so-called “forever chemicals”) to Harrisburg’s Capital Region Water (“CRW”) wastewater treatment plant, where it is discharged without significant further treatment into the Susquehanna River. The federal court’s decision makes clear that Modern Landfill may not permissibly keep such information secret, as it has attempted to do, but instead it must be made available to the public.
In April 2023, following a lawsuit filed in federal court alleging violations of the federal Clean Water Act, the Landfill installed an advanced reverse osmosis (RO) treatment system to treat its discharges to Kreutz Creek, a tributary of the Susquehanna River. But the Landfill is negating the value of that system by taking the same wastes that the RO system has removed from Kreutz Creek and sending them through CRW’s non-RO treatment system and back into the River upstream from that same Creek.
“Modern Landfill is repeating the same type of environmental insult that a federal judge criticized Boston for doing forty years ago,” said Jim Hecker, Senior Environmental Enforcement Attorney at Public Justice, who is representing Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association along with attorney Steve Harvey of Philadelphia. Boston treated the city’s municipal wastewater at its Deer Island treatment plant, generating sewage sludge, and then dumped both the treated water and the sludge into Boston Harbor. Judge Mazzone said it was “incomprehensible to me that the defendants have continually discharged the sludge back into the Harbor daily. By so doing, they virtually eliminate any benefit the initial treatment steps may have had. This simply amounts to separating water from filth and pumping both back into the Harbor.” United States v. Metropolitan District Comm’n, 23 Env’t Rep. Cases 1350, 1359 n. 9 (Sept. 5, 1985) (emphasis in original).
The Landfill’s on-site treatment system uses RO to separate the wastewater into the filtered permeate, which is discharged, from the so-called “reject” which is held back by the filters and contains the concentrated wastes. But rather than safely dispose of that reject, which contains a high concentration of pollution and contaminants, the Landfill ships it to CRW, which does not employ any sophisticated filtration technology to remove those contaminants from the waste stream before discharge into the river but instead relies on the greater volume of water in the CRW system to dilute the contaminants before discharge. From May through December 2023, Modern Landfill sent about six million gallons of RO reject to CRW for discharge into the Susquehanna River, which serves as an important source of drinking water. Modern Landfill is continuing to send the RO reject to CRW for ultimate discharge into the river.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently set health-based limits for two PFAS chemicals in drinking water at 14-18 parts per trillion. 25 Pa. Code § 109.202(a)(4)(ii). In February 2023, the unfiltered wastewater discharged by Republic Services of Pennsylvania, Inc., the owner of Modern Landfill, contained 2,460 parts per trillion of those chemicals. CRW’s discharge point is a half-mile upstream from the drinking water intake for the Borough of Steelton. See Harrisburg NPDES Permit No. PA0027197, June 27, 2023, Fact Sheet, p. 2.
In January 2023, Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper filed a citizen suit under the federal Clean Water Act against Republic. Riverkeeper alleged that the Landfill has repeatedly violated its permit limits for boron and osmotic pressure, which is a measurement of total dissolved solids. Riverkeeper also alleged that Republic has illegally discharged PFAS into Kreutz Creek without an NPDES permit authorization. In response to Riverkeeper’s discovery requests, Republic produced documents showing that it was sending its reject to CRW and to Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission (PVSC) in Newark, NJ, but marked those documents as “Confidential” and “Attorneys’ Eyes Only.” The court’s March 25 order granted Riverkeeper’s motion to remove those designations.
“It’s like the Wild West out here,” said Ted Evgeniadis. “Although this arrangement between Republic Services and Capital Region Water is not illegal, it very well should be. Due to non-existent regulations, contaminants like PFAS are being transferred from one facility to another facility upstream and are being discharged right back into the Susquehanna River. To make matters worse, this arrangement was kept a big secret and was shielded from the public. The Department of Environmental Protection has the opportunity to require further monitoring and permitting of this waste stream before it is sent elsewhere for final treatment. Dilution is NOT the solution to pollution.”
PADEP issued a draft permit in August 2023 that would, among other things, require Republic to monitor the PFAS in its discharges. Presciently, in its public comments on Republic’s draft NPDES permit, Riverkeeper urged PADEP to prohibit Republic from discharging its RO reject “directly or indirectly into surface water without further analysis of impacts on the existing Pennsylvania [maximum contaminant levels] and downstream drinking water and, if necessary, without issuance of a separate NPDES permit, imposition of an applicable permit limit, or further treatment. Otherwise, Republic would be improperly transferring the PFAS from one waterway to another.” Oct. 4, 2023, Comments at 2. PADEP has not yet responded to those comments or issued the final permit. Given this new information, PADEP should include a permit condition prohibiting Republic from sending its RO reject to CRW or PVSC and requiring it to dispose of the reject safely and responsibly.
Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association is represented by Public Justice in Washington, DC and Steve Harvey Law LLC in Philadelphia, PA.