BUTLER TWP — For the next few weeks, drivers passing the Butler Area Sewer Authority on Route 8 and Litman Road, may see trucks labeled “residual waste” pumping into the authority’s tanks.

John Schon, BASA’s operations director, said the blue trucks labeled Elite Gas Field Service have nothing to do with Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling, and everything to do with garbage.

Waste Management is in the midst of expanding the West Sunbury landfill.

“When they put down the liners to encapsulate the waste from the ground, they collect rain water, as well as water from garbage within the dump itself.

“This happens when you open a new landfill site. It’s expected, but you have to pump that leachate, as it is known, out of the site and have it treated,” Schon said.

BASA is the emergency processor for leachate from the West Sunbury landfill.

Lori Caso, public affairs officer for Waste Management, said that the company is completing upgrades to the on-site leachate tank farm and water treatment facility in West Sunbury.

The current work has made “it necessary to haul the water that runs off the landfill to the treatment facility. This is all fully permitted and is only a temporary measure as we complete our upgrading process,” Caso said.

Schon said the state Department of Environmental Protection regulates the amount of water than can be treated at BASA.