By Amy Batista, Special Writer
FLORENCE — Waste Management representatives met with the township’s Environmental Commissioners on Sept. 8 to discuss the Tullytown landfill.
"We know that the purpose for being here is that there have been odors over here in Florence," said Bob Luliucci, Waste Management’s senior district manager of the landfill complex in Tulltown, Pennsylvania.
He told the commissioners and residents that the company wants the odors to stop.
"Residents have been very clear in wanting the odors to stop," he said. "We are moving forward to make that happen."
He noted that "a lot of additional equipment" has been installed at the facility.
"We have an additional permit for about 1,500 feet of odor misters to install," he said. "We have some portables out there to do testing of some of the waste. We have a crew on-site that deals with all the odor control systems on a daily basis."
He also noted that they are in the process of making additional changes to the "way we operate and the manpower that we have."
"We have a new vendor that is going to be coming in who has been doing a lot of work in the Gulf Coast area and the Florida area that has had to deal with the landfills with a lot of hurricane debris and all that type of stuff and they have had tremendous amount of odor down there far greater than what we are dealing with," he said.
It might take a week to 10 days, two weeks at the most, for them to start, he said, noting that various pieces of equipment and products will be brought in.
"We want this to go away," Mr. Luliucci said. "I know you folks want this to go away and it’s not for a lack of trying at this point. It’s evolving as we try things and things aren’t working. We are set to expand. Whatever it takes to make it stop. That’s what we are going to do."
He said the company is directly applying odor control to the landfill waste.
"We have a water truck that takes an odor control chemical and sprays right on the waste as it’s being dumped out of the trucks to try to neutralize as fast as possible," he said.
He said that he has been in the business for 29 years and "has dealt with everything from running a bulldozer to putting gas collection systems in to operations manager, district manager, and senior district manager."
"I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not going to kid you, I’m going to tell you the truth," he said. "We are going to do whatever we can to make this go away."
Environmental Commission Secretary William Bott said residents should be able to open their windows and at times they can’t because of the odor."
"I can understand the frustration of the people who are getting that smell," said Mr. Bott. "I know you’re trying but whatever you’re doing doesn’t seem to work and if it doesn’t work then anybody who is near the area when the smell hits they’re not having a good place to live in. They are not able to have a backyard sometimes because of the odor."
He said he has called and will start calling the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) to report the odor and is "fed up."
"I’ve been on this thing since the beginning," he said. "I’ve been a pain in the neck on it."
Mr. Luliucci said he does "understand the frustration of the folks over here."
"I don’t take it lightly," he said, adding that he lives with it every day, too. "My phone is never off — 24/7 I am getting texts on this and that and we are doing what we can."
"We even sent people out to try to just try to verify things," he said. "What odor is it? Is it the trash or is it the methane so we can try to figure out what is going on."
He said he "can’t go across the river and like a light switch — throw the switch and it goes off."
"We have to develop what it is going to take to neutralize that and that’s why we are moving some of these other people in here who have dealt with this situation at a far greater extent," he said.
Mr. Bott said that the smell is more prevalent when they are dumping by the hill.
"When I was calling you were just on the other side of the hill," he said.
"We are essentially just over the hill when you look at it right now," Mr. Luliucci said. "We are in the valley and we’ve even looked at things like what are the wind dynamics out there."
Council member Sandusky asked if they would dump in the front again or stay in the back.
"We are going to be where we are at right now until the landfill closes because that is the last area of fill that we have there," Mr. Luliucci said, adding that the landfill will not go any higher than it is now.
Commissioner Thomas Stanuikynas asked what the procedure is when someone calls in a complaint.
"Are they logged or monitored," asked Commissioner Stanuikynas.
Mr. Luliucci said they are logged.
"We get called through the hotline," he said. "We will ask the resident or whoever it may be if they want to see somebody at their place to talk to them about it right away."
"We send people 99 percent of the time just to verify what it is," Mr. Watts said. "We can either do something that night or that morning to find out what it is."
A lot has to do with the wind and the weather in general, Mr. Luliucci said.
He also attributed smells to the trucks "that get backed up."
"You get lines out there because you can’t dump them all at once," he said.
The commissioners requested a copy of the call log.
NJDEP Press Officer Lawrence Hajna said that the NJDEP receives odor complaints on a "fairly regular basis from residents living in Florence."
"The DEP or Burlington County Health Department will send inspectors to residents of Florence who call in an odor complaint," said Mr. Hajna. "If the inspectors can verify the odor at the time of the visit and believe that it is coming from the landfill, we will contact the Pennsylvania DEP and request they investigate."
According to Mr. Hajna the recent breakdown of complaints are 10 in February, three in March, one in April, one in May, none in June, one in July, 13 in August, and four to date in September.
Community Relations Coordinator for the Pennsylvania DEP Lynda Rebarchak said they received odor complaint notifications from NJDEP on Aug. 8 and again on Sept. 10.
"We will be following up," said Ms. Rebarchak.
When asked if an air monitoring station is set up to "make sure there is ambient air quality," Mr. Luliucci said, "No we don’t. The monitoring is done at their facility. All of our gas collection is monitored consistently and has to be tuned on a monthly basis. We have quarterly what is called surface scans where they come out and actually scan the ground to see if there is anything coming out of the ground."
Commissioner Stanuikynas inquired about "any damaging chemicals or pollutants that come out of the landfill."
"Hydrogen sulfide is a naturally created gas through decomposition of waste through soils and vegetation," Mr. Luliucci said, adding that it can be "harmful at large concentrations."
"We don’t have those type of concentrations out here," he said, adding that the gas collectors carry personal monitors on them that would go off.
Commissioner Stanuikynas asked, "Is your best management approach to mask the odor or reduce the odor?"
"Eliminate it," Mr. Watts said.
"This company is going to look at our landfill, assess it and tell us what we need to do," he said, adding they would use an eliminator with less of a masking agent.
"Masking agents have an odor also," he said. "You may not like orange or you may not like pine or all the different stuff that’s out there. We don’t want to mask it, we want to neutralize it."
Commissioner Joseph Csik asked if dumped garbage is covered right away or "does it lay awhile."
"The landfill gets covered at the end of every day with six inches of cover on the active work face on a daily basis," Mr. Luliucci said. "The waste continues to come in all day long and we continue to spray it and packing it then as we reach towards the end of the day we start closing it or covering it up until the last load is gone then we finish covering that active area."
Once we reach the final elevation we put a final cap on, he added. The landfill is projected to close mid-2017.
"We have 16 acres of final cap going down right now," Mr. Luliucci said, noting that it is a polyethylene liner and 2 feet of topsoil.
Resident Charlie Bauer suggested the commissioners take a tour of the landfill "to see exactly what is going on."
"I think it would be advantageous to set a tour up so the Environmental Commission knows what you’re dealing with instead of just listening to what’s going on," he said.
"I have no problem to make that happen," Mr. Luliucci said.
Resident Bob Fitzpatrick spoke on behalf of the Citizens Against the Smell of Tullytown, which was recently formed.
He said the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "now has jurisdiction over air coming out of Pennsylvania in to New Jersey."
"It’s called the Clean Air Act," he said. "So, we are going to the federal government EPA and we are bypassing Pennsylvania; we are bypassing New Jersey and going directly to the feds."
He said the act was passed last spring.
"I don’t expect anything from you guys, I just want you to be informed," said Mr. Fitzpatrick.
He claimed that Waste Management is "reactive not proactive."
"You sit here and listen to all the things they say they are doing to do," he said. "I have a hard time believing that. I’m not being fooled by them."

