Ten more years (well, maybe 20) — that’s all the people’s representatives of Orange County and Chapel Hill ask of the historically black neighborhood saddled with a landfill some 37 years ago.
Ten years was all they were asked back then, after all. But by golly, through recycling and composting and making that landfill bigger and better we were able to go four times that.
The people who live in and around the Rogers-Eubanks roads neighborhood — the families
who worked the land and helped craft that beautiful university — are incredulous. It is not an unfamiliar state.
They are stunned as we are at the disconnect between history and reality and the decision to pursue yet another major waste facility around their homes.
For the new members of this commission and town leadership, and to those new to the area, the decision to do so might make some sense. But history and reality will file it, we believe, along with other regrettable acts of expediency.
Somehow this got out of control again and what was at least a fairly public process about where to site a new waste transfer station became murky. And, again very quickly, the easiest thing to do — dump this burden on the same people near the same place — seems to be the favored position.
There is no doubt that the N.C. 54 site is flawed, mainly due to location. But with the timeline stretched a bit and new options opening in Chatham County and elsewhere for partnerships, there is no reason to fast-track another site, especially one that compounds a historic error.
It is not too late for the county and its municipal partners to work together to find a more suitable site or strategy. Initiating a search for a smaller site seems to be a reasonable step to take.
The worry is that with the county vote on Tuesday, we appear to be heading down the same path that ultimately led to the rejection of an alternative temporary site on Eubanks Road, less than a mile away from the site proposed on Millhouse Road.
History aside, this site for a proposed transfer station doesn’t make sense. It is in the rural buffer and not served by utilities. It is next to a school with 250 K-12 students and they cross the road often to get to playfields and gardens adjacent to the proposed transfer station. And to get to the site, trucks, including tractor-trailers, would have to travel along Eubanks and Millhouse roads.
While the technical reasons tell us the Millhouse Road site doesn’t seem right, the historical record tells us to reject it out-of-hand. It is time to heal Rogers Road, not continue to wound it.
As one resident reminded commissioners Tuesday night, the landfill, the annexation that split the neighborhood and the extension of the landfill to almost indefinite status has all but destroyed what was once a close-knit thriving community with a rich history that rivals any neighborhood farther up the hill.
If our newly composed county commission and the leadership of the Town of Chapel Hill decide to pursue this path, they should do so knowing that they’ll likely finish the job.
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