The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority plans to appeal a recent court ruling ordering it to permanently close the Keegan Landfill in Kearny, according to the agency.

The agency, which owns and operates the landfill, filed a motion Friday with the court’s appellate division requesting more time to start the appeal process.

“We contend that the court made many erroneous findings of fact and conclusions of law,” the NJSEA said in a statement.

It comes just a day after angry residents and officials were met with blank stares and few comments at NJSEA’s meeting on Thursday, the first since a judge ordered the town’s landfill permanently closed.

The town of Kearny sued the NJSEA over the landfill in April, after residents had been living with high levels of hydrogen sulfide emissions for months. The rotten egg-smelling fumes were impacting residents’ health and quality of life, Kearny said, an argument Hudson County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Jablonski’s sided with in his Sept. 30 decision.

Hydrogen sulfide emissions are not only unpleasant smelling, but can cause nausea, headaches, dizziness, confusion and irritation to the eyes, nose and throat.

After five days of testimony in July, Jablonski wrote that NJSEA’s remedial efforts at the landfill, including the creation of a gas collection system, “are impermissibly temporary and only attempt to mitigate the hazardous condition the landfill creates, rather to eliminate it.”

The state earned $12.5 million from the landfill in 2017, according to the most recent annual audit available.

The landfill creates a “clear and immediate danger,” he wrote in the decision, which Kearny Mayor Al Santos said “fully vindicated” his town’s residents.

Jablonski also found the testimony provided by Kearny’s expert witnesses to be “more credible” than the testimony of the NJSEA’s expert witnesses.

“The court’s decision, which went on for almost 50 pages, was based on the expert’s testimony during the hearing, so I think the argument that there are findings of fact that are appealable, I think that is a very weak statement,” Santos said.

The governor should intervene and prevent the NJSEA from appealing, said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. Last week he took a position against a power plant proposed for North Bergen, and he should do the same here, Tittel said.

“It’s unfortunate that they’re appealing because they are going to be using taxpayer money to try to continue to pollute a community,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Phil Murphy said the governor “does not typically comment on pending litigation."

“He takes the complaints of Kearny residents very seriously,” spokeswoman Christine Lee said in a statement. "Despite the ongoing litigation between the parties, since the spring, the New Jersey Department of Environment Protection has overseen the permitting and installation of a gas collection and control system at the landfill by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.

"The quality of life and health of Kearny residents is of the utmost importance and this system is the major step toward eliminating hydrogen sulfide emissions.”

The NJSEA has until Oct. 21 to file a motion for leave, the first step in the appeal process, but it does not yet possess transcripts from an earlier hearing that it says it needs in order to prepare that motion, according to the motion the agency filed Friday. It expects to receive the transcripts Oct. 21 so is requesting a 10-day extension, attorney James Stewart wrote in the motion.

The transcripts are from a five-day plenary hearing in July in which experts testified on Kearny and the NJSEA’s behalf.