Falls Waste Plant Plans Proceed, Neighbors Fight Back

FALLS TOWNSHIP, PA — Plans to build a hazardous waste treatment facility in Falls Township are progressing, even as local residents are organizing to fight it.

On Jan. 25, Elcon Recycling Services, LLC officially submitted a land development proposal to the township.

"Township staff and professionals have begun a review of the proposal," Falls officials said in a Facebook post. "At this time, there are no set dates for when this proposal will be reviewed by the necessary boards and commissions. All such meetings will be public. Also, dates will be announced in advance."

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has until May to decide whether to sign off on the plans, which call for a facility that would treat up to 193,000 tons of hazardous and pharmaceutical waste per year.

It would be at the Keystone Industrial Port Complex in Falls, on a 23-acre parcel of land previously owned by U.S. Steel.

The environmental protection department has scheduled a public meeting on the proposal for Tuesday, March 5. The meeting will be from 6-9 p.m. at the Sheraton Bucks County Hotel at 400 Oxford Valley Rd. in Langhorne.

But the project, which has been more than four years in the making, has already gotten the attention of locals who don't want the treatment and storage facility in their neighborhood.

On Wednesday, about 60 people gathered at Falsington Friends Meeting House to discuss opposition to the plan. Environmental activists and others voiced concerns about the potential for air pollution, water pollution and accidents at the plant.

"Our major concern is that it's too close to our residences and too close to our drinking water," Lise Baxter, co-founder of Bucks POWA (Protect Our Water and Air) told Patch. "The air is already failing in this area. We're already not meeting air standards. We feel instead of making the air worse, we should be working to make the air better."

Baxter said her group has held several meetings in recent months and plans to canvas Falls in the next few weeks, with hopes of knocking on every door in the township of roughly 34,000 residents.

She pointed to a fiery tanker-truck crash Thursday on I-95 in nearby Bensalem, noting that Elcon would be shipping hazardous waste into the area using trucks and saying that would pose a serious safety concern.

Elcon, which does not have to seek any local zoning variances for the project, has assured the public that the facility — the first in the United States by the Israeli company — would be state-of-the-art and safe.

The company says no radioactive waste or waste from oil or gas "fracking" operations would be accepted. The majority of its potential customers are in the tri-state, Delaware Valley region and the facility actually would make things safer, because those customers currently transport waste via truck and rail car hundreds of miles to use less-sustainable technology to dispose of it.

The company says 150-200 jobs would be created during construction, as well as about 120 permanent jobs at the facility.

"Elcon has sought community engagement, and responded to concerns and input from the community by revising our plans to incorporate the feedback received, including: eliminating all process discharge from our process technology, ensuring our buildings are built outside of the site’s wetlands, agreeing not to accept waste streams from fracking or radioactive operations, deciding not to use rail cars to transport waste streams, taking steps to control the truck route and providing assurance no trucks will travel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Morrisville," the company says on its website.

"We remain committed to continuing our dialogue with the community, seeking input and incorporating it whenever possible into our plans."

Artist's rendering courtesy Elcon Recycling