The Whitehall Township Zoning Hearing Board at its Oct. 20 meeting will rule whether Coplay Aggregates breached a 2012 decision allowing only clean fill dumped into the quarry outside of Stiles or the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection permit to dump regulated fill there.

In a new development since the Sept. 15 hearing at which the township took Coplay Aggregates back to the zoning board regarding the issue, Mayor Edward D. Hozza Jr. said, “Coplay Aggregates has a quarry in the Slate Belt area. Trucks are coming in there from New Jersey.”

Hozza said he has no knowledge of the impact, if any, it has on the Beekmantown Road quarry in Whitehall but added, “There have been reports on fewer tri-axle trucks with fill going to the (township) quarry.”

Hozza said the township still has not received a reply to its letter to the Pennsylvania DEP, which asked for information on how the department reached a decision granting Coplay Aggregates a permit for the dumping of regulated fill and why it held no public hearing before granting the permit.

The township contends an earlier inspection by the Pennsylvania DEP showed violations - specifically, photos of syringes and medical waste dumped into the quarry. Only six acres of more than 30 acres are permitted for dumping, so in the future, the site could be reclaimed for other uses.

Attorney Chris Gittinger, special counsel for the township, told the zoning board it should revoke the variances granted in 2012 to Coplay Aggregates since it is only to have clean fill dumped at the quarry. In fact, the township said at the hearing the company’s director of compliance testified only clean fill should be dumped into the quarry.

Attorney Blake Marles, counsel for Coplay Aggregates, said the township’s argument is baseless and bizarre and said the board should decide on whether it even has jurisdiction in the case before it makes a ruling.

“We should not be here because there is no basis for this anywhere in the law,” Marles said.

Gittinger said he believes the zoning board may have ruled against the variance had it known that clean fill would not always be dumped there.

“We don’t think the use of other types of fill would have been considered not detrimental to the public,” Gittinger said.

“Sometimes you get bad loads,” Marles said, when confronted with an October 2014 Pennsylvania DEP inspection report that found medical waste at the quarry.

Zoning board Vice Chairman Lee Christman said the medical waste shown in the photos is not a minor incident.

Whitehall Township Commissioner Phillips Armstrong, delegate to the zoning board, did not testify. Commissioners President Linda Snyder was in the audience but also did not speak.

Lawyers for both the township and Coplay Aggregates were instructed to submit legal briefs for the board to review prior to the next hearing.