Philadelphia Weekly

Two years ago this summer, a dead body was found on the property of waste transfer plant Richard S. Burns & Co. Inc. Investigators believe the badly decomposed body was a black woman in her 40s with a scar down her abdomen--the result of a traumatic injury. The woman is still unidentified, and in the neighborhood of Hunting Park, discomfort over the case lingers.

Now Burns & Co., which processes construction and demolition waste as well as municipal waste, seeks approval to expand its facility. Located on the 4300 block of Rising Sun Avenue, Burns & Co. is working with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to increase its maximum daily volume of waste from 1,500 tons to 2,500 tons per day. That is, if the company can successfully negotiate with Hunting Park community members, who are calling for full disclosure and a promise to address their environmental concerns.

"We're worried about contamination and concerned about more trucks and traffic," says Catalina Hunter, member of the Hunting Park EPIC Stakeholders, a mostly Latino community organization. "We're concerned about the children here. We don't like subjecting them to pollution and asthma and bronchial conditions."

The fear is that the plant, whose representatives declined comment for this story, will come to define the neighborhood, decreasing the quality of life for many area residents. If approved for the 2,500 tons, the plant would expand into the community, going from 3.6 acres to a proposed 7.04 acres. Residents insist this would increase neighborhood traffic due to the creation of a new entrance to the facility on Rising Sun Avenue, a busy thoroughfare.

Longer hours are proposed as well, from 6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., seven days a week, instead of current hours, when the plant stays open until 7 p.m. on weekdays and until 5 p.m. on Saturdays. Privately owned dump trucks would be received by the company 24 hours a day.

Residents would ideally like to negotiate with the company, but they say Burns & Co. hasn't been forthcoming. Now the Hunting Park EPIC Stakeholders are recruiting as many protesters as possible prior to the Dec. 2 DEP meeting for final approval.

"They [Burns & Co.] don't say much. They don't approach anybody to say what they'll do. They're looking for permits," says Hunter. "But we have to get the whole community to help fight this. We don't have a problem with the company. We just want some type of consideration. The reality is that we respect the way they work but at some point they have to come out with some information."

One of the agencies responsible for approving the expansion is charged with sorting out whether the plan makes sense for the community. Deborah Fries of the local DEP suggests community members' ire and subsequent action may be premature.

"When [Burns & Co.] presented the proposal to us and to the public, they showed that by eliminating the entrance on Bristol Street and moving it to Rising Sun Avenue it would actually improve traffic," she says. "Burns is asking to have their daily volume limit raised to 2,500 tons per day, which is significant, and I don't know what that means in terms of numbers of trucks idling on the street. But I can confirm that a traffic study is under review with PENNDOT and they're very sure that the new traffic pattern would work much better than what they have now."

But community members worry about more noise, higher carbon monoxide levels and the migration of rodents and other unwelcome critters associated with a larger waste processing facility.

"They just opened a new elementary school at Rising Sun and American Street, the Antonio Pantoja Charter School," says Hunter. "That's just a little too close."

Staff writer Kellie C. Murphy last wrote about HIV/AIDS among African-American women.