Pottstown Landfill: The Facts

More Air Pollution – More Illness

1. Pottstown Landfill CANNOT operate in such a manner as not to cause air pollution (a permit condition).  
2. Pottstown Landfill is a MAJOR source of Greater Pottstown air pollution.
3. Every Pottstown Landfill air permit is a permit to pollute.
4. Pottstown Landfill’s air pollution permits are about public health.
5. Air pollution makes people sick.
6. Pottstown Landfill’s air pollution permits will unnecessarily further jeopardize the health of tens of thousands of residents around the Pottstown Landfill, especially the thousands of children who attend 29 schools and day care centers within 3 miles.
7. Standards used to determine our safety from Pottstown Landfill’s air pollution are inadequate, especially for our children.  “Meeting all standards,” is misleading and not a guarantee of our safety. 
8. Pottstown Landfill’s air pollution violates our rights to clean air.
9. Stench from the Pottstown Landfill is on-going in many areas around the landfill.  This severely diminishes the quality of life for those unfortunate victims of this air pollution. 
10. Closing the Pottstown Landfill is the only way to prevent additional air pollution and harm to residents.  Every ton of waste results in additional air pollution for decades.

Health Problems and Related Effects

1. PA Cancer Registry statistics document skyrocketing childhood cancer rates around the Pottstown Landfill far above the tri county, state, and national averages.
2. Our youngest children are 15 times more vulnerable to the potent cancer causing chemicals from the Pottstown Landfill.
3. Around the Pottstown Landfill, there are other significantly elevated cancers – lung, cervical, brain, and breast cancer, and leukemia (at almost twice the rate of the state). 
4. Other serious harmful health effects can be linked to the kinds of hazardous substances in Pottstown Landfill’s air pollution, such as asthma and other respiratory problems,  immune system damage,  nervous system disorders, short and long term memory loss, ADD/ADHD, learning disability, thyroid problems, liver and kidney damage, birth defects, miscarriages.

We can’t trust or believe what Waste Management tells us.

Waste Management Repeatedly

Mislead and/or Misrepresented Information.

Ø       Waste Management told us the Eastern Expansion would be their last – NOT TRUE

Ø       Waste Management told us they no longer take hazardous wastes – NOT TRUE!   Only the name has changed.  Many of the wastes Pottstown Landfill accepts contain materials that are hazardous to human health.  The same wastes which were called hazardous, are now called residual.  Waste Management accepts vast amounts of wastes which contain materials extremely harmful to human health.   If fact, after years of accepting radioactive wastes without a permit, Waste Management has requested to legally accept radioactive wastes.  That permit is still pending.

Ø       Waste Management told us their gas is not hazardous – NOT TRUE!

·         Occidental Chemical’s permit to burn Pottstown Landfill gas as fuel proved just how hazardous Pottstown Landfill gas really is.  Occidental asked for a 310% increase of hazardous air emissions to burn Pottstown Landfill gas instead of natural gas.  Included in the 310% were mercury, vinyl chloride, benzene and other very hazardous chemicals.  

·         Waste Management’s gas is likely some of the most hazardous landfill gas in the nation.  It is documented to be radioactive.  Radiation can not be filtered out at combustion.

·         Waste Management burns its gas in 2 flares and 2 turbines, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.   Pottstown Landfill gas contains chlorinated chemicals.

      Burning chlorinated chemicals produces dioxin as a by product of combustion.   Dioxin is one of the most toxic chemicals known to mankind.

Ø       Waste Management told us there is no link between their air pollution and our elevated illness patterns around the Pottstown Landfill.  How can that be true?  They certainly can not prove it.

Ø       Waste Management wants us to believe we should not complain about poisoned air and poisoned children, if we make garbage and want our trash removed.   NOT REASONALBE – NOT ACCEPTBLE.

·         About 80 % of the wastes that filled the Pottstown Landfill are from outside our region, and it is not mostly household waste.  

·         Waste Management has made millions using the Pottstown Landfill in the Greater Pottstown Area, as a sacrifice zone for massive amounts of industrial wastes, medical wastes (including infectious wastes), sewage sludge (from many municipalities, radioactive wastes, incinerator ash, demolition debris (including asbestos), and the municipal wastes of others.

·         Even if Waste Management only took municipal wastes from this day forward, our air will still continue to be poisoned from what has been dumped over the past 15 to 20 years.

Ø       Waste Management wants us to believe that there will be nowhere to go with your garbage if the Pottstown Landfill closes.   NOT TRUE 

·         There is more than enough permitted landfill space in the state of PA to take our waste in this region for another 10 to 12 years.

·         If Waste Management does not want to continue to pick it up and take it somewhere else for the same price, another trash hauler will.

Ø       Is it reasonable for tens of thousands of people to be slowly poisoned for decades, by toxic air, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for the sake of 18 to 20 Pottstown Landfill jobs?    We think not!

Tell Waste Management

Their Public Relations Tactics Won’t Work Here Anymore!