Letter to DEP Regional Director

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The Alliance For A Clean Environment

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The Alliance For A Clean Environment
P.O. Box 3063 Stowe, PA 19464
(610) 326-6433
July 30, 2003

The enclosed letter details how the S.E. DEP has been supportive of Waste Management’s profits, at the public’s expense, both physically and financially. This letter to the director of the S.E. Regional DEP office shows why the health of tens of thousands of Greater Pottstown Area residents, especially their children, have continued to be further jeopardized by air pollution permits issued to the Pottstown Landfill that were in violation of the Clean Air Act.

S.E. DEP has shown an absolute disregard for human health, repeatedly ignoring evidence of harm around the Pottstown Landfill. Waste Management has circumvented health based standards of the Clean Air Act in this severe non-attainment area. DEP facilitated these violations.

This letter identifies DEP’s failure to prevent repeated Pottstown Landfill Clean Air Act violations. Time after time, DEP has failed in its duty to enforce the Clean Air Act to protect public health, concerning air pollution permits issued to Waste Management for the Pottstown Landfill. Unnecessary suffering for the profits of Waste Management must be stopped now.

Without your immediate intervention, this pattern of abuse is likely to continue with the three pending Pottstown Landfill air pollution permits now being reviewed by S.E. DEP. Without your help, more residents around the Pottstown Landfill will get sick and some may even die needlessly, including children.

We ask you to do whatever you can to support ACE’s requests.

For Pottstown Landfill’s Clean Air Act violations, we ask that Waste Management be required to spend whatever is necessary to manage its Eastern Expansion gas over the next several decades with the safest non-burn technology, instead of flaring.

a.: Replace all three flares that jeopardize this community’s air 24 hours a day, with the safest non-burn technology.
b.: We are not asking that the two turbines be replaced which generate electric, although that would reduce the health risks even more.

Close the Pottstown Landfill now. More waste means more air pollution, which means more illnesses which could be avoided.

Thousands of children around the Pottstown Landfill attend 29 schools and day cares. They are far more vulnerable to Pottstown Landfill’s air pollution than adults. These children need you to take action to protect them NOW. They can’t protect themselves from the air they breathe 24 hours a day. This air pollution contaminates not only their outdoor air, but also their sports fields, playgrounds, backyards, and homes.

Please help protect our children!