The company behind a Schuylkill County biosolids processing facility that has drawn years of odor complaints and repeated state enforcement is asking for permission to keep operating.
Natural Soil Products turns municipal sewage sludge into biosolids at a 106.5-acre site along E. Center St. in Frailey Township. The company has filed an application with the state Dept. of Environmental Protection to renew its solid waste permit.
Tully Environmental Inc., of Port Washington, New York, the company that owns Natural Soil Products, is not asking to expand its land, change its hours, accept new kinds of waste, or increase how much material it handles. The renewal application keeps the current limits in place, including a maximum of 450 tons of biosolids per day and a monthly daily average of about 300 tons.
The plant accepts Class B biosolids, which is treated sewage sludge. The material is trucked in from wastewater plants across the region, including several in New York City, Long Beach and Staten Island, Elizabeth, New Jersey. It also accepts some sewage sludge from Tower City and Tremont in Schuylkill County. The wet sludge is blended with wood chips at roughly a three-to-one ratio and composted using the Gore Aerated Static Pile system. That is a covered, forced-air method the company installed under state order to cut down on smells that have prompted years of complaints from residents living in the area of the facility.
Natural Soil Products has a long record of problems, and that record makes up a large part of the application itself. State law requires the company to disclose its own compliance history, and it runs to dozens of violations over recent years.
Inspectors have cited the facility for failing to control public nuisances and pests, operating out of step with state requirements, open burning or airborne emissions, and missed groundwater monitoring.
The most serious action came in 2023, when DEP and the company signed a Consent Order and Agreement carrying a $50,000 penalty tied to 31 violations. As Coal Region Canary reported at the time, the company was also fined $500 a day for missing an October deadline to install the Gore odor-control system, and its request for more time was denied. Residents from Joliett, Good Spring, Donaldson, Newtown and Tremont told officials the smells were disrupting their sleep and affecting their health.
The problems have continued. In December 2025, just weeks before this renewal was assembled, DEP issued another Notice of Violation against Tully Environmental. Inspectors found the facility storing about 33,600 cubic yards of biosolids, nearly double its 18,000-cubic-yard limit. They also found thousands of cubic yards of unscreened material sitting on pads where no storage was allowed. Regulators flagged that groundwater samples had been collected without a required DEP representative present and with an improper filtering method.
Further, the company says the Gore system has been producing compost that is wetter than normal and nearly impossible to screen. Because the company now only lets fully screened compost leave the site, it has reopened several older pads to hold and dry the excess. That drying can take one to two and a half months depending on the weather. To make the practice legal, the company says it has filed a separate minor permit amendment with DEP’s Wilkes-Barre office and is waiting for a decision. Those are the same pads DEP cited for over-storage in December.
The application includes a nuisance-control plan covering odor, dust, noise, litter, and truck traffic, and it notes the site sits within a half-mile of what the state designates an environmental justice community.
DEP will now review the application and the public has 30 days from the July 12 public notice to submit written comments to the department’s Northeast Regional Office in Wilkes-Barre, and those comments become part of the official record.
Here is contact information and an address to send public comments on NSP’s permit renewal application:
PA Department of Environmental Protection
Northeast Regional Office, Waste Management Program
2 Public Square
Wilkes-Barre, PA 18711-0790
Phone: 570-826-2511
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