White Oak receives DEP violation notice

The issue involves worries about the composting facility in the borough.

White Oak received notice of a violation from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection regarding the borough’s composting facility.

Talking with council members at Monday’s workshop meeting, one of the borough’s engineers, Amber Yon, said the DEP is requesting a “gluten control plan” for the site due to worries of pollution and runoff, and the compost itself is the problem.

“I’m reviewing some of your old files, and I have not come across a (pollution control plan) as of yet, but if you have one, I would be happy to resubmit that plan for you,” Yon said. “If you don’t have one, we can put one together. I have to review your files if there is a payment needed, they may want something around the site.”

The borough composts at the old tennis courts at the White Oak Athletic Association complex on Lower Heckman Road, according to Borough Manager John Palyo. The borough isn’t being charged any money at this point for the violation.

The location’s gate is locked unless a borough employee is there to use the site. It’s only used by borough employees and the compost is checked monthly — with it being turned and temperature checked.

“We do everything,” Palyo said. “It’s inspected probably quarterly by the Allegheny County Health Department, and we have had good reviews and no issues and I think the one month we had a reminder to turn it.

“Deep down, they’re going to enforce their regulations, but we’re not a landfill. People aren’t coming just out of the general public and just dumping. It’s a very controlled environment. We aren’t taking contractors, no commercial vendors dump there. It’s purely residential leaves collected by borough employees.”

Title 25, Chapter 271 of Pennsylvania code provides the rules for permit-by-rule for municipal waste processing facilities other than for regulated medical or chemotherapeutic waste. It also includes qualifying facilities and general requirements.

Public works conducts leaf collection for the entire month of November, according to Palyo, with leaves to be placed at a front curb covered with a tarp or put in clear bags or brown paper recycling bags.

The borough only dumps the leaves into the composting site on working days in November, Palyo said.

“And then what we do is in the fall we collect one of the wind groves that is all fully decomposed,” he added, “we put it up at the park, and residents will come and get it and use it for their gardens, their flower beds and things like that.

“When you read this, it’s almost like they are treating us like a landfill and they want to know what our plan is for discharge, runoff and all of these other items that they want the daily reports of the tonnage dumped. It’s not like we’re there year round. So I’m not quite certain what has prompted all of this, but we’ll figure it out and we’ll get through it without any further pain.”

Palyo said he provided Yon with the original folder of when the composting site was permitted and filed for as well as everything the borough went through to get the permit, and the original permitting was from the DEP itself.

Yon recommended for the borough to contact the inspector who reviewed the site for a meeting to further discuss the exact issues the site had.

“I am sure she is just following her regulations,” Yon said. “Notice that this site does not have a pollution control plan attached to it, and this (violation is) asking for that. We will do a review of the latest regulations because I’m sure they’ve changed over the lifetime of this compost pile. I’ll pull up the latest regulations and a pollution control plan was probably part of the latest regulations to bring your site up to code.”

Palyo agreed, stating that there should be a meeting with the “appropriate people,” including himself, a DEP representative, the borough’s engineers and the borough’s public works.

He added that at the previous meeting with the DEP, public works was the only one in attendance at the site, and said he was not “100% certain what information was conveyed or not conveyed.

Palyo also recommended for the borough to go to its nearest composting site, which is Grandview Nurseries in Irwin, if this becomes a larger issue.

President Charles Davis agreed with this if the violation ends up costing the borough money, adding that the only people who will suffer from moving the site are those who use compost.

“If it becomes something that we have to all these costly measure to address their concerns,” Palyo said, “then at that point, probably our recommendation would be is to continue to do our composting program, but we no longer have a composting site in the borough, and we take the product to the closest approved composting site, which is Grandview Nursery, and we dump the material there. We’ll figure it out.”