Borough objects to FAA view of landfill expansion

By EVAN BRANDT
Mercury Staff Writer

With a deadline looming, Pottstown officials scrambled Jan. 10 to file an objection to a determination by the Federal Aviation Administration that making the Pottstown Landfill 100 feet higher would not adversely affect the operation of the Pottstown Municipal Airport. Three days later, Borough Council retroactively approved that action.
The deadline was set by a branch of the FAA, which on Dec. 13 alerted the manager of the Pottstown Landfill to the results of a study of the issue.
The study concluded that the proposed 99-foot increase in the height of the landfill’s 51-acre eastern expansion area "would have no substantial adverse effect on the safe and efficient" use of the airport.
While that was good news for landfill manager John Wardzinski, borough officials didn’t share his rosy view of the study’s result -- particularly because they didn’t know about it.
It wasn’t until Jan. 9, when The Mercury published a story about the fast-approaching deadline for commenting on the FAA’s determination, that borough officials found out.
They would be the first to say they weren’t happy.
With the objection deadline set for Jan. 12, a Sunday, officials had one day to assemble their reasons and get them off before the end of business on Friday.
They did.
Letters were sent to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the manager of the eastern division of the FAA’s airspace branch.
Primary among the borough’s objections is the fact that in the past year, the borough has spent more than $700,000, at the FAA’s request, to remove trees and other obstructions near the airport’s flight path.
Now the FAA, which once opposed the lower expansion on which this higher mountain of trash will be piled, has said a much larger and higher obstruction is acceptable, said Borough Council President Jack Wolf.
"I would also like to point out that neither we, nor the surrounding municipalities of West Pottsgrove Township and Upper Pottsgrove Township were ever formally advised by the FAA that there was a pending request for a determination in regard to our airport," Wolf wrote to the FAA.
"The first notice we had that advised of the request for a determination of no hazards to air and navigation was an article that appeared in the local newspaper," said Wolf’s letter.
"In case you can’t figure it out, Borough Council is a little ticked about this," Wolf said Monday.
Wolf also produced copies of a letter from Upper Pottsgrove Township officials,

supporting Pottstown’s objections and sharing them.
Jim Peters, who works in the public affairs office of the FAA’s eastern division, objected Friday to a characterization in The Mercury that the "interested parties" only had one day to respond to a decision nearly a month old.
He forwarded a list of 58 people, agencies and companies to which the FAA had mailed notice of the request and the subsequent listing.
In addition to such obvious agencies as the Pennsylvania Bureau of Aviation, those who received the notice included the City of Virginia Beach, the United States Parachute Association, the U.S. Hang Gliders Association and the Experimental Aircraft Association.
All were higher on the list than Pottstown Municipal Airport, which occupied the 57th line on the list. Although a copy was received at the airport itself, the business which operates the airport for the borough did not forward it to borough officials, said Wolf -- an oversight he said he does not expect to be repeated.
The determination was also supposed to be available on the FAA Web site, but Peters confirmed a Mercury report that for reasons as yet unexplained, it was not to be found there.
Also, on an attached list was the Alliance for a Clean Environment, a longtime landfill foe which had registered with the FAA as an interested party. It was their response to the FAA determination on the landfill that triggered the chain of events described above.
The borough has also informed the FAA that "we have anecdotal reports that there is an increase in bird population (at the landfill) at the present time."
But, according to documents forwarded by Peters, that is a problem with which the FAA is already familiar.
An entirely different division of the FAA, the airports division, safety and standards branch, wrote to Wardzinski Dec. 23 and said because of the bird problem there, it is not yet willing to withdraw its objection to the landfill expansion.
This letter informed Wardzinski that this branch of the FAA would only withdraw its objections to the expansion if a number of bird control measures are met.
If it seems confusing to have two different branches of the same agency giving mixed signals about the same landfill expansion, don’t expect Borough Councilman Stephen Toroney to be surprised.
He pointed out to council that the FAA, which objected to the previous expansion which will be 100 feet less intrusive into the airspace, had also contradicted the determination by Pennsylvania aviation officials.
He waved a copy of a determination by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Aviation which opposed the expansion.
"So we have two agencies clearly contradicting each other," said Toroney. "What a surprise.