Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has released the reports for the final 6 counties from their Statewide Illegal Dumpsite Survey Program covering Lehigh, Northampton, Pike, Susquehanna, Wayne, and Wyoming. 

The latest and final round of surveys found 243 sites with an estimated 492.5 tons of trash.

With these counties completed, Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has surveyed every county in the Commonwealth locating 6,487 dumpsites with a total estimated tonnage of 18,516.83 tons. 

The illegal dump surveys are available online.

Funding for this latest round of surveys was provided through a grant from the Department of Environmental Protection. 

In order to develop a comprehensive strategic plan to address illegal dumping including public policy, proper resource allocation, community education, and cleanup and abatement efforts, Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful embarked on a statewide illegal dump survey program in 2005.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful believes that in order to truly address the root causes associated with illegal dumping, the problem needed to be better defined.

“A county survey is a tool that can be used for planning purposes within a community, provide valuable insight into development of solid waste and recycling programs, to gain support for funding for public awareness programs and education, as well as to clean the existing dumpsites. With initial data collection portion of this project completed, we are now ready to turn our attention to building a strategic plan to significantly reduce illegal dumping in Pennsylvania.” says Shannon Reiter, President of Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful. 

Earlier this spring, Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful hired MSW, Consultants, Inc. to determine actual community costs as they relate to illegal dumping, both cleanup and abatement in Pennsylvania. Findings from this effort are expected to be released in the fall of 2013.

“This cost data, in conjunction with the illegal dump survey data collected over the past 7 years, will serve as key components to building our strategic plan,” explains Reiter.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has hired Nestor Resources, Inc. to complete the statewide analysis and aid in the development of recommendations for state, county and local governments and community stakeholders to significantly reduce illegal dumping in Pennsylvania.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful expects those recommendations to be made available in 2014.

“Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful is an invaluable partner to DEP and Gov. Corbett’s administration,” DEP Acting Secretary Chris Abruzzo said. “This most recent report, which found an estimated total of nearly 500 tons of waste at 243 illegal dumpsites across the six northeastern counties, shows there is more work to be done. We have made considerable progress in recent years and we expect to continue that trend moving forward.” 

Since 1990 Keep PA Beautiful has organized cleanups resulting in properly disposing over 97 million pounds of trash from Pennsylvania’s landscape as well as recycling over 5.2 million pounds of scrap metal and over 651,000 tires through cleanups and special collections. 

For more information, visit the Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful website.

7/15/2013