Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

County to study Millhouse transfer station option

Posted on May 21, 2009May 21, 2009 by Staff

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

The Orange County Board of Commissioners agreed Tuesday night to consider a site suggested by Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy north of the Town Operations Center on Millhouse Road as a potential location for the county’s proposed solid waste transfer station.

Not surprisingly, Millhouse residents are troubled by the suggestion. They’re joined in their concern by their neighbors a mile to the southwest on Rogers and Eubanks roads and by representatives of the Emerson Waldorf School.

Foy first suggested the 32-acre Chapel Hill-owned location two weeks ago. He then took a small group of community members on a tour of the site. The Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association (RENA) responded with an open letter to Chapel Hill and county officials asserting that residents of this historically black community were “adamantly against” a transfer station on Millhouse Road or anywhere in the vicinity of Rogers and Eubanks roads. Eubanks Road has been the site of the county landfill for the past 37 years.

Foy presented the suggested site last Thursday night at a work session held for representatives of the county, Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough to discuss the status of the transfer station site search. Foy stressed at that meeting that the Millhouse site was only a suggestion, that it hadn’t been put before the Chapel Hill Town Council and that he only wished to gauge the county’s interest.

While saying that he wasn’t sure he himself was in favor of the location, Foy said that since the land is owned by the town, selecting it might be a means of “most efficiently utilizing tax dollars” and that money saved might be used as compensation to the Rogers-Eubanks community for having housed the landfill for so many years.

Chapel Hill Council member Mark Kleinschmidt followed-up Foy’s comments, saying, “We’re willing to be creative with the assets we have to help this situation.”
Some commission members were concerned about the timing of the offer.

At last Thursday night’s meeting, Commissioner Mike Nelson expressed frustration that the Millhouse site was being introduced at such a late stage in the process, one that has now been underway since early 2008.

“Putting another option on the table is not my choice,” Nelson said.

Millhouse Road runs off of Eubanks Road to the north. The intersection of Millhouse and Eubanks is less than a mile from the entrances to the landfill. Millhouse and Rogers-Eubanks residents alike say that putting a transfer station so close to the landfill would mean the community would further bear an undue burden on behalf of the broader community. Members of the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood had thought they were finally out of the clear when the county commission chose to remove the Eubanks landfill site from consideration for even a temporary transfer station.

One point of contention is whether Millhouse Road lies within the historic Rogers-Eubanks community. Commissioner Barry Jacobs said at Thursday night’s meeting that it was his understanding that community members and county officials had agreed upon the boundaries some years ago, and that Millhouse wasn’t within them.
But members of RENA disagree.

RENA co-chair Rev. Robert Campbell read a resolution to the commissioners during the time allotted Tuesday night for citizen input, stating that “boundaries are not just some lines on a map. The social and cultural connections are what establish the fellowship which builds and binds communities for generations.”
Campbell presented a packet of documents to the commissioners, which included newspaper articles chronicling the joint efforts, since 1972, of Millhouse and Rogers-Eubanks residents against the landfill and landfill extension.

‘A war zone’
“We feel like we’re in a war zone,” Judy Nunn-Snipes told the commission. Snipes is the daughter of longtime Rogers-Eubanks community member Gertrude Nunn, whose family has lost land owned for generations to the landfill.

“We consider this site as insult to injury to a community that doesn’t deserve it,” Snipes said.

Charlie Viles, vice chair of the Emerson Waldorf School board, also spoke during the public comments session. Viles pointed out that the school’s land adjacent to the suggested site includes a garden and a playing field for soccer and frisbee.

Viles said that the Millhouse location should be opposed based on traffic and environmental considerations and in fairness to those who’ve lived in proximity to the landfill.

The location that emerged from the county’s transfer station site-search process – an 147-acre tract off N.C. 54 in the White Cross community – remains on the table, and consideration of the Millhouse site will run parallel to that process.

Tuesday’s unanimous vote (Nelson wasn’t present) to take the Millhouse Road site under consideration means that county staff will now make a preliminary analysis of the site and return with its findings on June 16. Commissioner Alice Gordon agreed to allowing further study with the stipulation that the site be subjected to the same criteria that has been used throughout the process.

After the recommendation was made, Cornelius Kirschner, a Millhouse Road resident since 1972, approached Campbell and shook his hand.

“We’re one community divided by a landfill,” Kirschner said. Campbell concurred.

Web Archive

© 2025 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme