POINT TOWNSHIP, NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY – Some environmental and health concerns have been brought up lately regarding the planned construction of the Encina Point Township Circular Manufacturing Facility.
Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper John Zaktansky has been a leading voice of these concerns, “This is a new plant, and at the scale they’re looking to do this at in our area, it’s never really been done anywhere as far as the way they’re looking to do it at the size of what it’s going to be done. That leads to a lot of open-ended questions.”
Zaktansky also says there’s a chief catalyst for the chemical reaction the plant would use when recycling plastics, “There is a form of it, a fibrous form that has been related to carcinogenic effects. They have sent then relayed that they aren’t using this fibrous form of it, but I don’t have details of what form of it they are using.”
Zaktansky says he’s also fielded similar concerns from the public through a survey he’s been conducting recently. Encina recently issued a responding statement, saying the use of the catalyst will be new, but it wouldn’t impact the safety of the facility, the surrounding environment, nor threat public health, and will not be in a fibrous form.
Zaktansky is also concerned about the high amount of plastic that would be recycled each day, “The one number that really stands out to me is this 450,000 tons of plastics they are planning on processing a year. If they’re operating 365 days a year, that’s 1,232 tons of plastic per day, so the volume of that could be much harder to conceive, and how many truck loads is that?
He’s concerned over an unknown amount of landfills would be used and how the Susquehanna River would be affected with water being drawn and put back in for cleaning the plastics. Encina also responded to that concern, saying it its contracting with ‘world-class partners’ to build cleaning and monitoring systems to ensure the water will be returned to the river clean or cleaner than withdrawn. Zaktansky says there are other concerns with traffic volume along Route 11 with trucks going in and out of the plant.
