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Evergreen Association collection on waste management in New Morgan (Pa.)
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Held at: Tri-County Heritage Society [Contact Us]P.O. Box 352, Morgantown, PA, 19543
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Tri-County Heritage Society. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
The Evergreen Association is a nonprofit local environmental group in Morgantown, a village in Caernarvon Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania. Presidents of the organization have included Kathleen Hood (1988) and Lisa Giordano (1991). In the late 1980s, the Evergreen Association protested a proposal to create the new Berks County municipality of New Morgan, PA, as well as proposals that would bring landfill and other waste management projects to the area.. The Association believed that the new municipality was only being created to circumvent existing zoning laws that would prohibit a landfill and trash-to-steam plant from being built on the site.
In 1985, Chester County developer Raymond Carr entered into discussions with Bethlehem Steel to purchase over 4,300 acres of land in Morgantown, PA that had once been the site of Bethlehem Steel's Grace Mine. Carr purchased the land in 1987 and transformed the empty buildings into an industrial park. He also asked Caernarvon Township for permission to build a trash-to-steam plant there, which the Township granted, but then quickly rescinded after the Evergreen Association protested the decision.
Carr and his company Morgantown Properties, of which he was the sole owner, petitioned Berks County Court to create a new borough called New Morgan from 3,500 acres in Caernarvon and Robeson townships. Carr's plan for New Morgan involved building a Victorian-era themed resort, as well as a sanitary landfill and a trash-to-steam plant. The proposal was decided by the ten voting-age residents that lived within the boundaries of the proposed borough, many of whom were Carr's tenants or had associations with Carr. In April of 1988, the residents voted (9 to 1) to form the new borough, generating anger and resentment from the residents of Caernarvon and Robeson townships. The borough of New Morgan was established with a total population of fifteen. (After this vote, Pennsylvania revised its law to require new boroughs to have a minimum of five hundred residents.) There were appeals made in the case until the borough's incorporation was finally upheld by the Supreme Court in 1991.
Shortly after New Morgan was founded, in 1988 Berks County began studying the possibility of creating a trash-to-steam plant there and Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI), one of the largest trash disposal companies in the United States, purchased land from Carr and applied for a state permit to operate a sanitary landfill that would not only handle Berks County trash, but would be large enough to import trash from elsewhere.
In the early 1990s, BFI received approval from the state for permits that would allow it to build a sanitary landfill and began construction. The Evergreen Association raised money to appeal the state's approval. As of 2016, Conestoga Landfill in New Morgan, Berks County, Pennsylvania is owned and operated by the New Morgan Landfill Company, a subsidiary of the North American waste management companies Allied Waste Industries and Browning-Ferris Industries. The Victorian-era resort was never built, and Carr passed away in his residence in Florida in 2015.
Bibliography:
"Area Highlights." Reading Eagle (Reading, PA), September 11, 1992. Accessed August 26, 2016. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19920911&id=84U0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=x6MFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4160,4240429&hl=en.
Morello, Carol. "A Borough is Born, And Neighbors Don't Like It." Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, PA), May 29, 1988. Accessed August 26, 2016. http://articles.philly.com/1988-05-29/news/26264225_1_caernarvon-and-robeson-townships-trash-to-steam-plant-new-morgan.
Stahl, Sharon. "History of Landfills is a Story of Growth." The Mercury News (Pottstown, PA), October 13, 2003. Accessed August 26, 2016. http://www.pottsmerc.com/article/MP/20031013/NEWS01/310139996.
Evergreen Association collection on waste management in New Morgan (Pa.), 1988-1992, consists primarily of binders with research related to the New Morgan Landfill Company's waste landfill permit application. Other materials in the collection include documents and copies of documents related to the selection of a vendor to handle a new landfill/waste management plan in Berks County. There are also some garments and objects from the Evergreen Association in the collection.
There are ten binders relating to a waste landfill permit application for Browning-Ferris Industries' subsidiary New Morgan Landfill Company. The binders were created by waste management consultants Blazosky Associates, Inc in September 1988 and January 1989, and revised in June 1991 and January 1992. The binders are labeled "Phase I and Phase II Application" and include: Phase I: Volume 1 Phase I: Volume 3 Phase I: Volume 4 Phase I: Volume 5 Phase I: Volume 6 Phase II: Volume 7 Phase II: Volume 8 Phase II: Volume 9 Phase II: Volume 12 Phase II: Volume 13 Materials in the volumes include soil testing, environmental impact studies, letters, run off studies, emergency plans, technical drawings of land, and other materials.
Other materials in the collection include documents and copies of documents related to the selection of a vendor to handle a new landfill/waste management plan in Berks County. Materials include copies of Berks County waste management plans and proposals, 1990; copies of minutes, agendas, and transcripts for meetings relating to the Berks County waste management plan; copy of a land use plan for Berks County, 1991; zoning ordinances for Caernarvon Township and Robeson Township; and other materials. There are also some issues of the environmental newsletter "Everyone's Backyard," 1990s.
Objects in the collection include Evergreen Association t-shirts and bumper stickers.
Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2014-2016 as part of a project conducted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of small, primarily volunteer run repositories in the Philadelphia area. The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR) was funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This is a preliminary finding aid. No physical processing, rehousing, reorganizing, or folder listing was accomplished during the HCI-PSAR project.
In some cases, more detailed inventories or finding aids may be available on-site at the repository where this collection is held; please contact Tri-County Heritage Society directly for more information.
Organization
- BFI Waste Systems
- Evergreen Association (Morgantown, Pa.)
- New Morgan Landfill Company (New Morgan, Pa.)
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Tri-County Heritage Society
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Sarah Leu and Anastasia Matijkiw through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories
- Sponsor
- This preliminary finding aid was created as part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. The HCI-PSAR project was made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Access Restrictions
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Contact Tri-County Heritage Society for information about accessing this collection.