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

An open letter to the Orange County Commissioners

Posted on December 3, 2009December 3, 2009 by Staff

We the members of a shared ministry of two churches in Chapel Hill write to express our mutual deep concern about the reported plan to place a new waste transfer station at a ten-acre county owned site on Millhouse Road, very close to the current landfill. We are concerned that the proposed site will continue to unfairly burden the same portion of our Orange County community long affected by the landfill now slated to be closed in a few years.

We are concerned that the traffic of trucks to the transfer station site will adversely affect the residents of the neighborhood.

We are concerned that this site may not have been through the kind of comprehensive EPA-recommended evaluation or screening that was accorded other candidate sites.

We have heard that previously considered sites were all 25 acres or larger, in keeping with EPA recommended guidelines, and wonder why a smaller site is now considered adequate.

We are concerned that unlike the other sites considered, this one was proposed very recently, and that plans may be underway to move quickly. And so we fear that the voice of residents in the Rogers Road-Eubanks-Millhouse neighborhood may not be accorded the same critical weight or fair period of time to respond as has been granted the residents of other Orange County communities that have opposed such a facility in their neighborhoods.

A simple measure of justice is equitable process . Equitable hearings and equitable treatment of persons and communities, rich and poor and middle class alike, and of persons of all races and heritages: these are core values shared both by religious faith and by civil standards of justice.

So we feel obligated in conscience to ask you as our Commissioners, before finalizing any decisions about a location for this proposed waste transfer station to examine closely whether the process employed in consideration of the Rogers Road Eubanks-Millhouse neighborhood site holds the same high regard for the safety, quality of life and environmental health as has been afforded other more well-to-do communities. We stand ready to meet with you, individually as Commissioners or together, to discuss our concerns. But more importantly we urge you to take the time to meet and listen closely to the neighbors immediately affected by these plans before proceeding any further. It is our belief that their concerns have not yet been clearly heard.

RESPECTFULLY,
Bishop L. Gene Hatley, Barbee’s Chapel Harvest Word Ministries, Peter J. B. Carman, Minister, Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church

Web Archive

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