Testimony of Lisa Perin, granddaughter of Grand Central Landfill founder, explains why Synagro plant would be never-ending negative value-added nuisance for Slate Belt

At a planning commission review of Synagro's shit bakery proposed in Plainfield Township, the granddaughter of Grand Central Sanitary Landfill's founder spoke at courtesy of the floor.  Lisa Perin, who lives adjacent to the landfill, spoke at length and from her unique perspective.  She itemized several ways in her opinion that the proposed project would be horrible for the community.

Lisa Perin

Ms. Perin appeared at only at this one meeting, but her comments reflect an understanding as someone who as she put it "heard trash talk at the dinner table."  On one point she was not familiar - that natural gas is available on the site currently, and will be used both as a supplementary energy source from inception as well as the sole source once the landfill closes and landfill gas ceases to be produced.  Once she learned this is the case, she immediately integrated the consequences of this for the community - it will be fucked.if this plant is built.  Ms. Perin also assumed the jobs would all be truck drivers, which ignores the fact there will be a couple of shit pushers in the building.

Ms. Perin's complete testimony,is below, with key phrases emphasized.

CHAIRPERSON: Lisa Perin.

INTERESTED CITIZEN: So I have two reasons for being here tonight. One is I live in extremely close proximity to the proposed facility.  I actually live on Grand Central Road. And if you walk out my front door from here to that wall back there. I'm looking at the current leachate tanks which don't bother me because I know how they’re controlled. But I do live close enough to this that it concerns me.

And the second reason is that I have a little bit of inside knowledge on the landfill industry given that my grandfather, Robert Perin, was the founder of GCS and my father. Ronald Perin, the late Ronald Perin, was the president until ‘95 when it was sold.

So just to give you a little insight on the litmus test that I’m using in my mind, I'm going to tell you how GCS started very briefly.

In the 1960’s the local town mayors came to visit my grandfather Bobby because they desperately needed a place to put their garbage. Having already asked several local farmers who turned them down and him being in the excavating business with holes in his ground, they felt that it was a good fit. He actually turned them down, he didn't want to do it. A little known fact.

They begged him to take the garbage because they had a great need for the local community. Eventually he decided to do it and here we are today how many years later.

So my litmus test here is that whether or not you like the landfill or not, it has provided hundreds of jobs over the years, a significant amount of additional tax revenue and has fulfilled a need for this community directly.

When I look at the proposed sludge plant, and I do -- now I'm a Perin, so there's a great deal of people who are very surprised that I'm against it. When I look at the sludge plant, it does not pass the litmus test in my mind. Does it provide enough jobs to outweigh the negative factors? No, not in my mind.

I believe that it was going to provide approximately 16 trucking jobs. So let's just discuss that real briefly. I think you used the phrase, family sustaining wages. 16 jobs that would provide family sustaining wages. I'd really like to know what your definition of family sustaining wages is, because I know what truck drivers make. And if you take out the taxes and you consider the

skyrocketing rents around here, you can't rent something for under a thousand that's decent here anymore. There's no standard on wages that these truck drivers are going to get paid.

How much revenue, if any, will be passed on to the community? The landfill via tipping fees provides a great deal of money to the community.  Yes, mostly to Plainfield Township.  I understand that's a bane of contention over the years.  But we do have things like the -- now the Slate Belt Regional Police Department, which was originally built with Plainfield funds, a lot of which came from the landfill. That's the reason that they have such a nice police department and the reason that is the one that you ended up using.

We don't know how much this is going to provide to the community. I don't believe there has been any answer. I do know that it's going to benefit Synagro. I do know that it's going to benefit Waste Management greatly. I do know that there's an awful lot of money being sent here today.

It was learned later the answer is "Up to $100,000 annually" total for Wind Gap, Plainfield Township, and Pen Argyl according to a Green Knight Treasurer Peter Albanese.  Millions of dollars for Synagro and Waste Management.  Ms. Perin is deftly explaining that this is a lose-lose for the community while the perpetrators profit handsomely.

There's attorneys racking up hundreds of dollars an hour, research and development, people flying in. I'm sure Synagro paid for all of them to drive up or fly in from wherever they came from.  They're spending an awful lot of money because it's going to be extremely profitable for them. Is it going to be profitable for this community? Not enough to outweigh the negative factors.

Does it fulfill a need in our community? The answer is no. Our sewer plants are currently able to handle what we process and provide in sewage in this area. We're taking in sewage from other communities. And let's face it, it's probably the very large cities that cannot process their sewage fast enough, which is also a great concern.

I realize that as far as this goes tonight, everything is very technical, dust control, odor control, there's a lot of things that you have to consider in approving this.

And I do understand that from a technical point, but I would like to point something out to you. The most important thing you should be considering here is whether or not your community wants this, not whether it passes X. Y, Z zoning and department of environmental protection issues. Does your community want this, should be the number one most important question in your mind.

Does it provide a service for your community?  No.  Does your community want it? No.  Overwhelmingly I know that you're aware that this community absolutely does not want it. If you put it to a public vote, which I actually believe that you should, you already know in your hearts and your minds that the overwhelming vote would be against it.

You are here to represent the people of this township. And I really hope that you take some of what I'm saying into consideration tonight and take some weight from the fact that I am who I am and I know what I know from family experience.

I'd like to add one more thing, and I know that you had a comment on courtesy, so I'm going to try co say this as courteously as possible to you, ma'am. I'm sorry, I don't remember your name because I came in after you introduced yourself.

I respect how long you've done your job. I can hear the mumbling because I sat in the back row at the number of times that you answered I don't know or I will have to set back to you. And this is no disrespect. I'm just pointing out that it is disconcerting to the people sitting in the audience that if you have 30 years of experience, you should be able to answer the questions off the top of your head or most of them, instead of continually saying I don't know. I'll have to check, or I'll get back to you.

How can you not know off the top of your head how many odor complaints there have been at a facility that is not near something else creating a smell?

You don't really need -- I mean, you can answer that if you want. Hold on, I'1l be finished in a second.

In closing, I would like to add one more thing because I did learn tonight that it supposedly only has a 20-year life span which is something new to me. But I would like to point something out to you from the Perin point of view because I sat around the family table many nights growing up listening to the inside conversations that were going on when the landfill was always applying for expansions and here fighting for expansions.

It is well-known in the private circles inside the landfill industry that it is far easier to expand a landfill than it is to create a new one. I would like you to apply that to this here, because you can say that it's only going to have a 20-year life span because the energy produced by the landfill is going to decrease over time after the landfill closes.

But how do you know by the time that comes that they aren't going to find another energy source? Because you need to take into consideration that the reason that they're spending so much on attorneys and research and development and spending time here is because it's really hard to open a new sludge plant and they're going to find a way to extend this one via a new energy source because that will be easier in 20 years than it will be to open another new one. And by then all this will long have been forgotten.

Please take those things into consideration. This may not be the 20 years that you're expecting it to be. A landfill has a time limit. At a certain point it can no longer expand.  It has nowhere to go. This will not just be 20 years, and I'm guaranteeing you that tonight, based on what I know of expanding landfills.

And I apologize in advance to my cousin Scott who works for Waste Management, him and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum on this, but I still love you. I thank you very much for your time.

If you would like to answer the question that I asked you about the number of odor complaints, I believe you previously answered that you have to check.

MS. RACEY: Sure. I mean, particularly in a setting like this, you want to be accurate, right? Because you don't to come back and say. oh, you said this or you said that. And, you know, we operate 500 projects across the country.  I can’t know everything that happened ever everywhere. Off the top of my head the answer is, no, there haven’t been any, but I want to check that because I care about being accurate.

INTERESTED CITIZEN: I do, too, because I live within a very close distance and have well water and I would like to make sure that my children aren't showering and drinking that. And I thank you very much for your time tonight. Thank you.

MR. KLEINTOP: Ms. Perin, for your information, the landfill has been using natural gas for probably five, six years already. And if you been here earlier, you would hear Synagro tell you that they plan on already using 16 percent natural gas. So they're set up to go. When the landfill can't provide waste heat, it's already in place.

INTERESTED CITIZEN: You're saying that when the landfill can no longer provide the heat, they're going to cease operating?

MR. KLEINTOP: No, they're going to convert over 100 percent to natural gas.

INTERESTED CITIZEN: Then how can it be 20 years? They're saying it can only be 20 years. In all honesty, it's going to be much longer than that. It's probably never going to cease.

MR. KLEINTOP: I don't believe they're saying they're going to operate the plant for 20 years. They base their return on investment on a plant operating 20 years. Now, they can step in any time they like. I don't believe they were saying they were going to close up shop at the end of 20 years.

MS. RACEY: You're correct. The economic analysis for the plan was on a 20-year basis. After that point we would assess, you know, is there a business case to stay open going forward. 

INTERESTED CITIZEN: And the answer, as I said, will most likely be, yes, because it will be easier to continue the existing facility than it will be to open a new one. So, therefore, many years after the landfill has closed, this will be indefinite. You need to keep that in your mind.  This will likely be indefinite and forever. There will be no ending to it.


CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

May 31, 2018

In the course of numerous planning commission reviews from November 2016 through December 2019,  as well as a DEP hearing in November 2018, over one hundred citizen witnesses including Ms. Perin have spoken at courtesy of the floor.  Every single witness has spoken in objection to the proposed plant.  To close this post, we have the testimony of Ms. Perin's uncle, Nolan Perin, who is the single witness in that time to have spoken "neutrally" - he stated he is not for or against it, but you can tell from his comments his true feelings - the Slate Belt should get its hands dirty "recycling" someone else's shit.

MR. PERIN: Good evening. My name is Nolan Perin, and I reside at 253 Meadow Lane, Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania about a mile or so southeast from the proposed facility.  I have a lifelong involvement with the waste industry, landfill and waste hauling side of the business.

We only have a few options now. We can recycle, have direct contact with the land as was done with mine reclamation. We can landfill it, or we can recycle it and turn it into useful products. While the last works fairly, well, it is limited to about half the days of the year due to weather consideration.  And the sheer amount of materials - excuse me a minute. And the sheer amount of land necessary for the landfill creates some other issues, exposing that water to the landfill and making it more contaminated.

My professional opinion is recycle the material.  These types of facilities reverse the process.  My home is close to the proposed facility, and I have no personal objection to it being built, nor do I state an objection.  In regard to health issues, I do not think the proposed facility is a threat. That facility has nothing to do with our communities. Our friends and neighbors are working the sewage treatment plants, and we have several septic tanks in the area. Who's getting sick? What is being handled is raw sewage. I don't see anyone getting sick.

Nov 7, 2018