Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
The company with plans to bring a hazardous waste treatment facility to Falls Township will hold a public meeting Tuesday evening.
Elcon, who plans to build a 22-acre treatment facility at a 33-acre site at 100 Dean Sievers Place in the Keystone Industrial Port Complex, will be holding their pre-application and community information session Tuesday starting at 6 p.m. inside the Sheraton Bucks County Hotel on Oxford Valley Road in Falls’ Langhorne section.
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The meeting will allow the public to take a view at the plans for the facility, learn about the Pennsylvania Department of Environment Protection’s application process and submit comments and questions.
The state has already approved a preliminary Phase I application for the site and the company is expected to soon submit the more-involved Phase II application.
Dr. Rengarajan Ramesh, a consultant for Elcon, said last summer that the proposed facility that could be built slightly more than a mile from the Delaware River is “clean, green and sustainable.” He also heralded the jobs the facility could bring and the fact that Elcon had made changes to their plan.
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After a first failed attempt to build a facility in Falls, Elcon revised their plans and scrapped a pipeline that would dump treated waste water into the Delaware River. Their current plan would see the treated waste water evaporated after being placed into an indoor closed-loop system. The left over distilled water would be reused to cool equipment at the facility.
Several dozen opponents of the plan are expected to turn at for Tuesday’s meeting. Those who are concerned about the facility and its potential negative impacts on the region have been alerting their neighbors and held several meetings with the community.
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Fred Stine of Bristol Borough-based Delaware Riverkeeper Network wrote in a email over the weekend that “No Hazardous Waste” pins will be available at the meeting.
The main concerns are over the toxins that could be released if a spill or flood caused the facility to leak into the Delaware River. A simulation run by the Philadelphia Water Department showed a leak of hazardous waste into the Delaware River could cause dangerous health impacts for the 1.7 million people that use city water, including Bucks County communities.
UPDATE: The size of the property where the facility will be built has been updated. Also, information on the water treatment process has been updated.
