Whitehall Township officials will go before the township’s zoning hearing board Tuesday, Sept. 15 to request a variance regarding Coplay Aggregates’ dumping of fill at a former cement quarry off Beekmantown Road.

The quarry is located in an OS2 zone, an open space/limited industrial zoning district. The township has asserted the fill dumped at the quarry is not what was originally allowed.

In its appeals filing, the township included testimony given at the Dec. 18, 2012, hearing by a Coplay Aggregates officer, who said, “It’s all clean fill. We do the testing prior to acceptance, and we also do some random sampling internally. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PDEP) comes out and takes samples. We have yet to have a violation based on what we’ve accepted since 2004-ish, 2005, when first we had some contamination on site. We cleaned up and have had a clean bill of health since that time.”

Commissioners President Linda Snyder expressed her dismay that a recent PDEP inspection at the quarry property yielded photographs of medical waste, syringes and other hazardous materials dumped at the site.

She contends the photographs did not show clean fill and Coplay Aggregates is in violation of PDEP’s regulations. Residents living near the quarry have complained of an odor, Snyder said.

“The people should be heard at a public hearing,” she said, calling the conditions appalling.

The issue took another turn more recently that disturbed the township when PDEP granted Coplay Aggregates a permit for the dumping of regulated fill on six acres of the 30-acre property at 5001 W. Coplay Road.

Mayor Edward D. Hozza Jr. and the Whitehall Township Board of Commissioners felt the township was blindsided by the permit without any input or consultation from the township, including not holding a public hearing before making its decision.

Regulated fill is defined by PDEP regulations as soil, stone, rock, dredged material, used asphalt, historic fill, brick, block and materials from construction or demolition work. It does not include medical waste.

The township has formally responded to PDEP, raising its objections to the permit. The township has retained the services of HDR Inc. to review all documents on file regarding the permitting process, applications, data and other filings. The township claims it was not consulted with, nor part of any public hearing, before granting the permit in question.