The ‘Horror Story’ of Hazardous Waste in a Small Pennsylvania Town

YUKON, Pa.—When government inspectors arrived at the hazardous waste landfill here in 2023, they found themselves in a barren and alien landscape carved from western Pennsylvania’s green countryside.

As they documented operations at Max Environmental Technologies, they climbed fields of blackened waste and photographed pits, mud, debris, stained walls and unlabeled storage containers. Their images offer a startling—and largely hidden—juxtaposition to the rolling hills, horse paddocks and chicken coops around the 160-acre site. What the inspectors captured confirmed the worst fears of Yukon’s residents, who have blamed the landfill for serious health impacts and called on regulators to intervene for years.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found rusted open containers of waste, clogged pipes and a containment building used to store untreated hazardous waste “in pretty significant disrepair.” They watched as rainwater mixed with that waste and flowed from the damaged building.

“There was a hole in the roof and it was raining during the inspection,” said Jeanna Henry, chief of the air, RCRA and toxics branch in the enforcement and compliance assurance division of the EPA’s Mid-Atlantic Region. RCRA is the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which regulates hazardous waste.