This month, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) did the right thing and said “NO” to a poorly sited warehouse development proposed by developer Route 115 Associates that would have paved over more than forty acres of wooded hillside in Tunkhannock Township, Monroe County. The proposed project would have put a 803,000 square foot warehouse and twenty-acres of parking lot in the watershed of the Exceptional Value Tunkhannock Creek, a pristine fishery, and one of the jewels of the Pocono Plateau.  

This victory comes after more than four years of watchdogging and opposition from PennFuture and others. In 2022, PennFuture, the Tunkhanna Fishing Association, and concerned residents of Tunkhannock Township urged the township’s board of supervisors to consider the project’s potential impact on Tunkhannock Creek and nearby Exceptional Value wetlands and to deny the developer’s application for conditional use (zoning) approval. When the board of supervisors approved the project over the residents’ concerns, advocates turned their focus to the project’s stormwater management permit, called a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit.  

The developer first submitted its NPDES permit application to DEP on March 2, 2023. For the next three years, it attempted, and failed, to design stormwater controls that would adequately protect the Exceptional Value waters that would receive the runoff from the property. Time and again, DEP informed the developer that the application was deficient. PennFuture monitored the application every step of the way, and with each attempt to revise it, we, our members, and other opponents of the project reviewed the changes and said, “Not good enough.”  

Finally, DEP agreed. With more two dozen technical deficiencies still remaining after three years’ worth of deficiency letters and revisions, DEP said, “enough is enough” and concluded that the developer was simply unable to prove that it could control stormwater runoff from the site without degrading the Exceptional Value waters that would receive the runoff. PennFuture applauds DEP’s decision to say NO to this inadequate application and others like it.  

This application also highlights an issue that must be addressed if the governor’s recent effort to streamline the permitting process for permits such as these is to be successful. For DEP to perform its job efficiently and effectively, applicants first must do their job—understanding the relevant requirements and submitting complete applications. DEP’s job is to review applications, not design them, and time devoted to identifying and correcting basic errors and omissions in an application or attempting to make an application “work” when the applicant hasn’t been able to do so itself, is wasted time that cannot be spent reviewing other applications. The result is a bloated review process that absorbs months of permit reviewers’ time and leads to the false impression that it is DEP, not the applicant, that is dragging its feet.  

If DEP is to move toward more efficient permit review, it must be prepared to deny NPDES applications when the applicant is unable to demonstrate within a reasonable amount of time that it can prevent degradation of our Exceptional Value waters. PennFuture urges DEP to continue denying deficient applications, and to make these decisions sooner rather than later. Otherwise, it risks being blamed for the sluggishness of a permit review process that is bogged down, not by DEP’s inefficiency, but by applicants who aren’t willing to put in the work.