“I’d trade it all for a little more.”

— C. Montgomery Burns, discussing his immense fortune on “The Simpsons.”

“The Simpsons” premiered in 1989, the same year Keystone Sanitary Landfill opened.

A quarter-century later, the animated series is still on TV, and the landfill’s owners are seeking a cartoonishly large expansion that would erect a mountain of out-of-state trash in the heart of Our Valley.

It’s the kind of toxic monstrosity C. Montgomery Burns would judge “ex-cellent.” Mr. Burns — ranked No. 2 in TV Guide’s “60 Nastiest Villains of All Time” — owns the nuclear power plant that employs Homer Simpson and most of the fictional town of Springfield.

Mr. Burns is the wealthiest, most powerful man in Springfield. When he looks down from his mansion on a hill, he doesn’t see families and neighborhoods, but ants born to march in service to his further enrichment. When the ants dared to conserve electricity, cutting into his power plant’s profits, Mr. Burns designed a machine to block out the sun.

“But Sir, every plant and tree will die, owls will deafen us with incessant hooting; the town’s sundial will be useless,” said Smithers, Mr. Burns’ lowly assistant. “I don’t want any part of this project! It’s unconscionably … fiendish.”

“I will not suffer your insubordination!” Mr. Burns hissed. “There has been a shocking decline in the quality and quantity of your toadying … and you will fall into line, now!”

While he can’t block out the sun (Mount Trashmore could come close), Keystone owner Louis DeNaples is the Mr. Burns of Northeast Pennsylvania. His wealth, political influence and ruthless business practices are unequaled in the region.

Last week, he did something undeniably Burns-like.

After decades of exploiting Dunmore at the state-mandated minimum host fee, Keystone recently negotiated a new deal that could pay the borough nearly $200 million over 50 years if the state approves the expansion. The deal guarantees $15.63 million over the remaining five or so years of the current phase of the landfill.

Keystone has agreed to pay more to Dunmore, but wants Scranton to help pick up the tab.

Last week, Keystone sent a letter to city officials announcing that the landfill will raise Scranton’s tipping fees — what the city pays to dump at Keystone — by 80 cents per ton starting Jan. 1. The hike will cost the city about $20,000 more annually. It’s not a lot of money, but the principle here is priceless.

Mr. DeNaples is a billionaire. Scranton is so broke, it struggled for weeks to fix the City Hall elevator. It has been financially distressed for nearly 23 years, is hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and just passed a 2015 budget with a 19 percent property tax increase.

Which can afford to write off $20,000? Mr. DeNaples, obviously, but he didn’t get where he is by absorbing costs he can pass on to others. It appears Scranton’s original deal with Keystone locked the city’s tipping fee at $47.25 per ton in exchange for the city using Keystone exclusively for eternity.

But an agreement brokered by former Mayor Chris Doherty in 2013 — in which Keystone agreed to allow the city to pay $1 million in tipping fees over three years — contains this clause: “The city agrees to exclusively use Keystone for the disposal of city generated waste for the life of the landfill provided the rate remains at $47.25 per ton exclusive of any future mandated fees.”

Hmm. “Future mandated fees"? What does that mean?

It was unclear Friday, but it appears Keystone is describing its increased payments to Dunmore as mandated. I’m no lawyer, but that seems a stretch worthy of Mr. Burns. The state mandates landfills to pay host communities a fee of 41 cents per ton, which Keystone was paying prior to the new agreement.

Keystone chose to raise the Dunmore host fee. You can’t mandate yourself. Otherwise, I’d be running marathons and living on green tea and Brussels sprouts.

But let’s say Keystone can raise the city’s tipping fee by $20,000. Under its new pact, the landfill will be paying Dunmore about $2 million more annually. The road from $20,000 to $2 million is long, and likely winds its way through every area municipality that dumps at Keystone.

Opponents of the landfill expansion argue that it would impact every community in the valley. If the Scranton fee hike is just the beginning, Mr. DeNaples may soon prove the opponents right.

Release the hounds.

CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, would rather live near a nuclear power plant than a landfill. Contact the writer: kellysworld@timesshamrock.com, @cjkink on Twitter. Read his daily blog at

blogs.thetimes-tribune.com/kelly

First Published: December 7, 2014, 1:47 p.m.