There is some dispiriting symmetry in a condition that the state Department of Environmental Protection has placed on the proposed massive expansion of the massive Keystone Landfill. Before it will consider the permit application, the DEP wants an engineering study to ensure that the millions of tons of additional garbage to be dumped will not collapse mine voids under the dump.

Such is the environmental legacy of northeast Pennsylvania. A new exploitation of the environment threatens to worsen an old one. Schuylkill County is no stranger to this.Whether such a collapse would bring a few million tons of decomposing garbage into contact with underground water is, of course, a valid DEP concern. But for northeast Pennsylvania, the concerns go well beyond even that.The dump in Lackawanna County has enough capacity remaining to receive "only" 21 million more tons of garbage and some other waste. That would take about 9 1/2 years. Under Keystone's expansion proposal, it would add 143 million cubic yards of dump space by building upward over another 47 years, during which it would receive another 106 million tons of garbage creating a Montage Mountain-size garbage mountain.For NEPA, the impact goes well beyond the host communities. Multiple sewer authorities are under federal orders to vastly improve treatment; orange-tinted acidic mine drainage continues to colorfully contaminate waterways; much of the region continues to suffer the environmental consequences of large-scale mining and the economic consequences of its collapse.At some point the region must decide that massive-scale pollution no longer can be an economic driver.- (Pottsville) Republican-Herald