
{"id":17134,"date":"2011-04-07T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2011-04-07T14:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=17134"},"modified":"2011-04-07T14:37:37","modified_gmt":"2011-04-07T18:37:37","slug":"board-of-commissioners-delay-decision-on-landfill-extension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/04\/07\/board-of-commissioners-delay-decision-on-landfill-extension\/","title":{"rendered":"Board of commissioners delays decision on landfill extension"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Susan Dickson<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Staff Writer<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Members of the Orange County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday postponed a decision on extending the life of the Orange County Landfill, saying they could not in good conscience consider an extension until a plan to mitigate the landfill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s impacts on nearby residents is proposed.<br \/>\nA group of residents of the Rogers Road neighborhood, UNC students and other community members blasted the board for even considering the extension, pointing to decades of false promises to and suffering by nearby residents.<br \/>\nCommissioner Valerie Foushee said she felt ashamed that the board had done nothing to mitigate the impacts of the landfill on the Rogers Road neighborhood during her six years on the board.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I am so appalled that we are at this same point that we were when we established a task force \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 to determine what we needed to do to make it right,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I take the blame, as this unit should take the blame.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I will not vote to extend the life of the landfill until we talk about enhancing the quality of life for the people that live in the Rogers Road community.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nThe landfill opened on Eubanks Road in 1972, with promises to the nearby historically black neighborhood that it would close in 10 years and be made into a park. Nearly 40 years later, the landfill remains open.<br \/>\nThe board in late 2009 voted to ship the county\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s garbage to Durham County\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s transfer station for a three- to five-year period starting when the landfill closed in 2012, but additional capacity was found that extended the landfill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life until 2013.<br \/>\nCounty solid waste management director Gayle Wilson told commissioners that by reconfiguring the grades on the sides of the landfill, the life could be extended until as late as March 2018. Revenues from the extension could reach as much as $11.7 million, according to county projections.<br \/>\nAllison Norman, president of the UNC Campus Y, led a group of UNC students urging the board to close the landfill.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just continuing racism in our county. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s negatively impacting the quality of life of the Rogers Road residents and it will continue injustice in our community,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153For 38 years, cries for justice for Rogers Road have fallen on deaf ears.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153For too long the putrid smell of racism has billowed into the Rogers Road community,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Norman said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong. We have a better option. We can do better.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nStan Cheren, a representative of the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association (RENA), presented a resolution to the board calling for the county to dedicate a percentage of landfill tipping fees to remediation for the Rogers Road community, as well as alternative methods of waste disposal that would allow the closure of the landfill.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Long-term obligations to 37 families remain unfilled,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153As the county benefits from these additional monies, it is at the cost of the quality of life of the citizens living in the Rogers Road community.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nBoard members said they would refer the resolution to their agenda review committee, which meets next week.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This issue of closing the landfill \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just about money,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Robert Campbell, a longtime leader in the Rogers Road community and a representative of RENA. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about the polluted air that makes it impossible to come out of your homes. \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about trash dumped at the most convenient sites when the landfill is closed.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about time that it stops. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about time that the landfill closed,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<br \/>\nSarah Hatcher, a master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s program student at the UNC School of Public Health, presented the results of a recent study by the UNC chapter of Engineers Without Borders and RENA that found 48 illegal dump sites in the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood. Residents have said the illegal dumpsites, along with intense odors, speeding garbage trucks and polluted water, are some of the landfill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s impacts on the neighborhood that should be mitigated.<br \/>\nCounty Manager Frank Clifton urged the board not to wait on the governments of Carrboro and Chapel Hill to take action regarding the landfill and an impact-mitigation plant. Board members directed staff to develop a mitigation plan and to look at how revenues from a landfill-gas project from UNC might be used to fund mitigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Members of the Orange County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday postponed a decision on extending the life of the Orange County Landfill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17134"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17209,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17134\/revisions\/17209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}