DEP, Firm to Discuss Possible Preston Landfill

Meeting to be held in Charleston today

Morgantown Dominion Post
29 April 2011

KINGWOOD — A meeting on a possible landfill in Preston County is being held in Charleston today. According to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), its representatives are scheduled to meet today with a firm and representatives of the Public Service Commission.

Kathy Cosco, DEP spokeswoman, said no permit application has been filed for a landfill in Preston County, but a company is meeting with regulatory agencies to gather information about the requirements for such a facility.

The company would have to receive authorization from the Preston County Solid Waste Authority and the PSC before it could apply to the DEP for a permit.

Rumors about a landfill being built in Bruceton Mills first surfaced last summer, when several county residents called Friends of the Cheat (FOC), a watershed protection group. FOC Executive Director Amanda Pitzer said she received information in July 2010 that the facility would serve as a disposal site for solid waste from natural gas drilling. She said the landfill was to be at the confluence of the Little Sandy and Big Sandy rivers.

Susan Small, spokeswoman for the PSC, said a meeting will be at 1 p.m. today at the DEP offices in Charleston. It is not a public meeting.

Yogesth Patel, assistant director of the DEP’s Division of Water and Waste Water Management Office of Permits, told The Dominion Post in July that his office had conversations with a Canadian company about a landfill. He said the proposal discussed had to do with “drilling material” from natural gas extraction.

When contacted Thursday, Patel would not identify the company participating in today’s meeting.

Small confirmed this week that the PSC would not act on any such application without approval from the Preston County Solid Waste Authority.