01/23/2020
Falls officials: Spring court date likely in Elcon appeal
Bucks County Courier Times
A graphic rendering of the proposed Elcon chemical waste treatment facility in Falls Township.
By Anthony DiMattia
Posted Jan 9, 2020 at 6:45 AM
A hearing between Falls and Elcon Recycling Services likely will take place in Bucks County Court of Common Pleas this spring, a township official said this week.
The battle to build a controversial waste treatment facility in Falls isn’t over yet.
A hearing between Falls and Elcon Recycling Services likely will take place in the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas this spring, a township official said this week.
The company filed an appeal last year after township supervisors voted in April to deny Elcon’s land development application.
The company sought to build a plant to treat between 150,000 and 210,000 tons of chemical and pharmaceutical waste a year, on a 23-acre plot of land in the Keystone Industrial Port Complex, formerly the footprint of U.S. Stee
January 22, 2020
Elcon continues push for waste plant in Falls
July 30, 2019
Elcon appeals Falls zoning denial of waste treatment center
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Before the two sides head to court, Elcon will have 30 days to submit a brief, township solicitor Mike Clarke said during Monday’s supervisors meeting. Falls will have 30 days to submit its brief before Elcon gets 10 days to submit a rebuttal, Clarke said.
Once the briefs are submitted, oral arguments will be scheduled in court, said Clarke, who estimated this would occur in April or early May.
The proposal has been a hot topic in the region since first floated in 2015, with residents and environmental groups expressing a wide range of pollution and human health concerns, and the company saying the facility would use advanced technology to ensure it is operated safely.
A few weeks after supervisors voted down the plan, it hit another setback when the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issued a draft “intent to deny” notice for the company’s primary application on May 15.
But a mandatory public comment process left the door open for Elcon to try again, and the company submitted more than 200 pages of changes to its application on July 15, the last day for public comment. The response is detailed and technical, but it appears to try to correct some of the issues DEP highlighted in its draft denial.
For example, the DEP in May requested Elcon conduct quarterly groundwater sampling to “provide the best assurance of the earliest detection” of any spills, instead of only testing in the event of a spill, as Elcon had initially proposed. In its new materials, Elcon appears to state it would sample quarterly with no argument.
