Pennsylvania’s Environmental Protection Regional Director Robert Yowell announced the department is permanently revoking Casella Waste Management of Pennsylvania’s Wellsboro, PA, transfer station permit effective March 17 because the company repeatedly violated the Pennsylvania Solid Waste Management Act and its DEP permit.
“DEP will not tolerate Casella’s persistent violations at this transfer station,” Yowell said. “The company has accumulated 112 violations since August 1997. They have been fined three times. They have shown that they simply cannot comply with our regulatory requirements, and that’s inexcusable.”
A DEP investigation that began in 2003 revealed that Casella regularly was exceeding the maximum 75 tons of waste per day that the transfer station was allowed to accept, and had been doing so since 1999. Records show that Casella accepted as much as 241 tons of waste in a single day. In addition, DEP investigators discovered that Casella did not keep daily operational records properly.
In May 2001, Casella submitted to DEP a major permit modification to increase the transfer station’s daily tonnage to 450 tons per day, and to accept residual waste in roll-offs and transfer that to trailers.
However, a January 2002 inspection by DEP at the transfer station found that Casella already was accepting excessive quantities of waste, accepting unapproved residual waste and operating an unpermitted transfer facility in Potter County. DEP fined the company $34,681, and Casella withdrew the permit application.
“When a company continues knowingly to break the law even after paying a significant civil penalty, it becomes quite clear that DEP must take even stronger enforcement action, and that is exactly what we have done here,” Yowell said.