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In Florence, residents can smell an end to a nuisance

Living on East Front Street in Florence, Kristan Marter and Luke Uzupis have a commanding view of what they wryly refer to as "Tullytown Mountain."

A truck carries trash into the Tullytown Landfill along the Delaware River in Bucks County. Waste Management plans to spruce up the side seen - and smelled - by residents in Florence, N.J.
A truck carries trash into the Tullytown Landfill along the Delaware River in Bucks County. Waste Management plans to spruce up the side seen - and smelled - by residents in Florence, N.J.Read moreCHARLES MOSTOLLER

Living on East Front Street in Florence, Kristan Marter and Luke Uzupis have a commanding view of what they wryly refer to as "Tullytown Mountain."

"They planted it with grass, so it's green and not ugly," says Marter, 56. "It just doesn't smell too good."

The dramatically steep slopes on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River are the eastern face of the Tullytown Landfill in Bucks County, where about 350 trucks a day dump municipal waste.

Citing public complaints from New Jersey and Pennsylvania about odors and other unpleasantries associated with the operation, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection last June ordered Tullytown to close on May 22, 2017.

Separately, a pending $2 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit against the dump is expected to mean reimbursement - how much is yet to be calculated - for some of Florence's 11,000 residents (www.ldclassaction.com).

"The people of this town have been fighting the landfill for a very long time," says Marter, the owner of a solar-power installation company.

(Some residents of Falls Township and Levittown in Pennsylvania also can expect to receive compensation.)

And as I discovered during a recent visit to the historic heart of the sprawling Burlington County township, despite technological and operational changes at the landfill, residents continue to view Tullytown as, at best, a nuisance.

"Lately, when I go out walking with my daughter, the smell hits us in the face," says Michelle Hendricks, 38, who delivers for the new Tony Soprano's Pizza shop on Broad Street.

At Broad and Front Streets, I stand in the waterfront's lovely Clark T. Carey Volunteers Park and watch enormous waste-hauling vehicles loop up, down, and around "Tullytown Mountain."

These trucks, and others using different access roads, collectively dump about 7,000 tons a day into the landfill.

I'm flabbergasted that a mountain of trash could be authorized on the banks of the Delaware - or so close to a historic community like Florence.

Residents say odor eruptions - "Tullytown burps," Uzupis, 56, says - happen all too frequently.

"It's terrible. And when it rains, it's even worse," says Randy Belknap, 63, a retired state government employee.

"I know a lot of people in town who have cancer, or asthma, and I can't say they're related to the landfill. But it does concern me," says social worker Melinda Carnessale, 41, a lifelong resident and mother of two.

"All I know," adds Walter Stackhouse, who's 61 and disabled, "is that it stinks."

It wasn't always this way; historically, despite being home to heavy industry, Florence was a leisure destination.

"People had bungalows" where the landfill now looms, says Mayor Craig Wilkie, 49, a lifelong Florence resident.

But after Tullytown Landfill opened in 1988, the mountain grew, layer upon layer, until it peaked at about 225 feet above the water.

"We have been dedicated to being a good neighbor to Florence," says John Hambrose, the greater Mid-Atlantic area communications manager at Waste Management, the Houston firm that operates Tullytown.

After closure of the landfill begins on May 22, 2017, he adds, layers of plastic and earth will be installed to "cap" the contents, and the company will continue to monitor and collect emissions of gas, treat wastewater, and otherwise maintain the site for 30 years.

Waste Management also intends to plant a variety of vegetation on the side of the landfill that faces Florence "so it will look more natural, and less engineered," says Hambrose.

The chief issue is the environment, rather than the aesthetics (or, for that matter, the settlement amounts) among the folks I talk to.

Marter and Uzupis also worry about two proposed waste-related projects just across the river in Bucks County: another Waste Management landfill in Tullytown that would be east and slightly north of the present dump, and an Elcon Recycling Services hazardous wastewater treatment facility in Falls Township.

The latter, which would be half a mile from the Delaware, has sparked fierce opposition from Mayor Wilkie and others.

"We shouldn't be placing these facilities on flood plains or at the water's edge," says Delaware Riverkeeper Maya K. van Rossum.

At the very least, she adds, "it discourages people from enjoying the river."

Says Wilkie, "It would be nice if residents of Florence could have their windows open."

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