• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Off Ramp for Centre County, Pa., Landfill Up for Vote

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

By Anne Danahy, Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.

Sep. 27--The Centre County Metropolitan Planning Organization is scheduled to vote tonight on whether the Interstate 80 interchange a landfill company wants to build in Rush Township is consistent with long-range county transportation plans.

The vote will be forwarded to the state Department of Transportation, which is reviewing the proposal for the interchange. Lancaster County-based Resource Recovery wants to build the I-80 interchange to provide direct access to the landfill and industrial park it has proposed building in Rush Township.

Resource Recovery submitted a point-of-access study on the proposed interchange, which the company would pay for, to PennDOT. PennDOT must review the study, then forward it to the Federal Highway Administration, which would decide whether to give the project conceptual approval.

Part of review process is determining whether the interchange is consistent with local plans. To do that, FHWA and PennDOT asked the Centre County Planning Office and Centre County Metropolitan Planning Organization to weigh in on whether the interchange, which would be located about half-way between the Snow Shoe and Kylertown exits, is consistent with county plans.

So far, the answer has been no.

County commissioners decided earlier this month that the interchange is not consistent with county plans. The MPO's technical committee voted that the interchange is not consistent with transportation plans, but in a separate vote, it supported asking the federal government to study the possibility of an interchange. Tonight, the full MPO will decide whether to take the committee's recommendation.

But Rush Township, which has a host agreement with Resource Recovery, has asked for an interchange to be included in the MPO's long-range plans.

"I'm hopeful that the coordinating committee of the MPO will see their way to forwarding to PennDOT and the federal highway system an appropriate document that will allow the application to go further and be evaluated as an application for an interchange," said Jack Shannon, chairman of the Rush Township supervisors.

Dave Cough, director of operations at FHWA's Harrisburg office, said his office does not have the Resource Recovery's point-of-access study yet. It is still being reviewed by PennDOT.

Herb Flosdorf, executive vice president of Resource Recovery said the land use and the interchange are not consistent with local planning because the proposed interchange and landfill didn't exist when the plans were written. He said the issue is whether the project would have a negative effect on Rush Township's neighbors.

"The way to eliminate any negative impacts on those neighbors is to build an interchange," Flosdorf said.

The company has not ruled out the possibility of using local roads to access the landfill.

-----

To see more of the Centre Daily Times, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.centredaily.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.)

More News in this Category