yearslong dispute over the landfill\u2019s effort to expand<\/a> that has played out in both court and the ballot box.<\/p>\nBethlehem Landfill Co., in a news release, called the Lower Saucon Township community survey biased and unrepresentative.<\/p>\n
Though the company targeted its concerns toward Lower Saucon Township Council, the survey was designed by the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission as part of a broader township-commissioned effort examining land use and township finances.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey chose us because our expertise is planning, and we are neutral,\u201d LVPC Managing Editor Matt Assad said. \u201cOur motivation is only to give the township the best information they have to map out their future.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t develop any questions,\u201d Victoria Opthof-Cordaro, president of Lower Saucon Township Council, said.<\/p>\n
The survey asked respondents to pick up to three top priorities for the township\u2019s future; what types of development they would be comfortable with; where development should be; what infrastructure is needed; and about environmental concerns, among other topics.<\/p>\n
Of 481 responses to the survey, 11 came from nonresidents of Lower Saucon, according to Assad, who noted that those responses would be used in data collection.<\/p>\n
\u201cDecisions about the future of Lower Saucon should primarily reflect the views of Lower Saucon residents, and we question why individuals who do not live in the township were invited to participate in the survey,\u201d Amanda Moley, a spokesperson for the landfill company, said in an email.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may have circulated through maybe the township social media a little bit,\u201d said Jill Seitz, LVPC\u2019s chief community and regional planner. \u201cI think other people were able to find the survey, but it was really targeted to just folks living in and interacting in the Lower Saucon community.\u201d<\/p>\n
The latest dispute comes after a Northampton County judge ruled in December 2025 that a legal protection on part of the landfill\u2019s land \u2014 which limits how it can be developed \u2014 should stay in place, blocking the company\u2019s plan to expand there.<\/p>\n
In addition to concerns about nonresident responses, Bethlehem Landfill Co. also took exception to the inclusion of a stock photograph of a landfill. The image in question appears in the survey as one of several building and land-use photos residents were asked to rate on a like-to-dislike scale, alongside images representing retail, office, agricultural and other development types.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncluding those images is like asking people to judge a hospital based on photographs taken in an operating room rather than the parts of the facility the public actually experiences,\u201d Moley said.<\/p>\n
The company also argued the survey failed to directly ask residents whether they\u2019d rather continue receiving landfill-related revenue or face higher taxes and reduced services without it. The survey\u2019s introduction began with information about financial benefits residents receive as a result of the landfill.<\/p>\n
Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Lehigh University, said that though it was unusual to include nonresident respondents in data analysis, the core methodology of the survey was standard.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, was the survey as constructed fatally flawed? I don\u2019t see any evidence of that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The survey is part of a broader township effort that also includes a separate, ongoing fiscal impact study by the Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government at Lafayette College, examining what the loss of landfill-related revenue would mean for township finances. Both the survey findings and the Meyner Center\u2019s study are slated to be presented Aug. 26.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that what\u2019s happening here is an appropriate response to just in general what our community faces in the future,\u201d Opthof-Cordaro said.<\/p>\n
Benjamin White is a freelance writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A survey measuring attitudes toward Bethlehem Landfill is already receiving pushback, even though the results won\u2019t be revealed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,182,205,139,434,28,432],"class_list":["post-263218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-local-news","tag-lower-saucon-township","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263218","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=263218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}