crossposted from
unbossed
Think about it. Central Pennsylvania, Center County, PA, where the green forested Alleghany Mountains rise up mile after mile. Some of the last great stands of interior forest in this country. Towns with names like Snowshoe. Light human population. Lots of very small towns, people living up dirt roads, lower education level. Think of all that means.
And if you are a developer what it means is: What a perfect place to build the largest landfill and garbage incinerator in the eastern US.
But what they didn't figure on was that even "dumb hicks" can figure things out and fight back. And fight back effectively.
The people go to meetings and make their case. They sponser walks in the area to be affected. The activists spill their time and guts over stopping this project.
And they put together a great website full of information - on a slow server, unfortunately.
So to save their bandwidth, here is a description of the situation. I'll include follow up posts in coming days.
This project first came to light in early spring of 2004 when Resource Recovery LLC (RRLLC) approached supervisors from both Snow Shoe and Rush Townships about a project they want to bring to the area. As far as we know RRLLC did not disclose the nature of the project until they actually met with the township supervisors. The proposal they brought to the table was a landfill, incinerator and industrial park to be constructed on a 5,800-acre parcel of land that straddles both townships. We feel the project is designed to be a massive waste facility for out-of-state trash. It has the potential to be the largest landfill east of the Mississippi. Currently RRLLC is only moving forward in Rush Township, which has no zoning ordinances. The portion of the land that sits in Snow Shoe Township is zoned forest/open space. Due to strong opposition from Snow Shoe Township, RRLLC withdrew their request to supervisors to rezone the area. The original project, per the Rush and Snow Shoe Township Host Agreement of April 2004, for this 5,800-acre site proposed the following:
* 2,300 acres of landfill footprint
* Mountains of garbage 250 - 280 feet high
* 317 million tons of garbage
* Rail yard service
* Landfill gas processing for boilers, fuel cells, microturbines
* Waste-to-energy facility
* Biorefinery (direct fired, co-fired, gasification, anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis)
* Dedicated I-80 interchange
* Capacity to receive up to 9,000 tons of garbage daily
Because the trend seems to lean toward fewer but larger landfills, we feel RRLLC, or whoever is behind this project, or whoever might own the project in the future, will come back to the Snow Shoe site and try to have the property re-zoned again. This project must be stopped in its entirety. If this project gets DEP approval, it will forever change this region of Pennsylvania.
Stop the Landfill.