BETHLEHEM TOWNSHIP, Pa. – When quality of life and big business meet, it’s not always pretty.<\/p>\n
Residents in a Bethlehem Township community say the Bethlehem Landfill is not fulfilling its duties of being a good neighbor.<\/p>\n
“We knew it was over there, but you really didn’t see or know that it was right there, because it was completely quiet and it was just, it was just a mountain,” Tina Bartley said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, after two years, Bartley says the landscape across her Bethlehem Township neighborhood off of Farmersville has radically changed.<\/p>\n
Her home sits in the shadow of the Bethlehem Landfill’s northern expansion, and its ever growing pile up of garbage.<\/p>\n
“I see dust, all the pollution that’s coming from, it scares me about, you know, my health, and the river, the animals that are over there,” Bartley described.<\/p>\n
Bartley, also on the Township’s Environmental Council, is concerned over pollution, odors and deforestation.<\/p>\n
In January, the Lower Saucon Township-based landfill was fined $137,000 by the state DEP for five years of violations.<\/p>\n
Lower Saucon Township citizen Lynn Hill says the Landfill isn’t being a good neighbor.<\/p>\n
“My biggest concern really, is that the landfill just keeps wanting to expand,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hill was part of the push back to halt the landfill from expanding into conservation easements.<\/p>\n
“We have to keep reminding the landfill, reminding DEP, to keep things cleaned up, you know, to keep mitigating the nuisances,” Hill added.<\/p>\n
As for Bartley, what she thought was her forever home may now come with an expiration date.<\/p>\n
“If I would have known about the expansion and what it would look like, I definitely would have considered somewhere else,” she said.<\/p>\n
We did reach out to Bethlehem Landfill and the DEP but did not hear back.<\/p>\n
Lower Saucon Township says this is still a very big issue for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM TOWNSHIP, Pa. – When quality of life and big business meet, it’s not always pretty. Residents in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,1391],"class_list":["post-156681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}