By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer
The Orange County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday night to keep a Chapel Hill-owned site on Millhouse Road on the table as a potential location for a county solid waste transfer station. The vote came before a packed Southern Human Services Center assembly of citizens, many of whom had just stood to voice their opposition to the site.
The 4-3 vote moves forward a proposal to ask the Town of Chapel Hill to formally offer the property, which is north of the town’s new operations center. Pending that offer, county staff will conduct a feedback session over the summer and is due to report the findings in August, when the commission returns from summer recess.
Voting for the proposal were Pam Hemminger, Barry Jacobs, Bernadette Pelissier and Steve Yuhasz. Dissenting were board chair Valerie Foushee and commissioners Alice Gordon and Mike Nelson.
“The public should not perceive that the vote last night was an indication that a decision has been made,†Pelissier said on Wednesday. “It’s about keeping the doors open.â€
Judging from those gathered Tuesday night though, the move is not popular. The introduction of Millhouse Road as a potential transfer station site arrived as yet another twist in what was already a protracted site-search process.
In April, after a year-long process, the county identified a 147-acre tract off N.C. 54 in the White Cross community as the best location for the transfer station. Then, in May, came Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy’s suggestion that the county consider the Millhouse Road site.
Foy stressed at the time that it wasn’t an offer – a proposal to sell or lease the land to the county hadn’t yet been put before the Chapel Hill Town Council – rather, that he first wanted to gauge the county’s interest.
Tuesday night’s discussion of the Millhouse site began with Bob Sallach of Olver Inc. reporting on his company’s analysis of the site, as requested by commissioners at their May 19 meeting. Olver is the consulting firm hired by the county to establish criteria, conduct the search and advise the commissioners on the selection of a site.
The Millhouse site had been considered in the original site search, but Sallach said it had scored low due to several factors, including poor access and inadequate buffering.
The Town of Chapel Hill has offered to allow transfer station traffic to use an access road through its operations center, which Sallach said improved the site’s ranking.
Considerations in the site’s favor, Sallach said, include its proximity to the areas of heaviest waste generation and to existing collection routes and the fact that governmental facilities are already there.
A majority of those in attendance Tuesday night were unconvinced. When, during the public comments session, Millhouse Road resident Robert Long asked those who oppose consideration of the site to stand, about two-thirds of the 100-plus gathered did so.
Most who spoke were puzzled that the site had withstood the scrutiny of the county’s community-specific criteria, which includes environmental-justice concerns as well as consideration of the number of residents affected and proximity to schools, churches and recreational sites.
Millhouse Road runs off Eubanks Road to the north, and the intersection of Millhouse and Eubanks is a half-mile from the entrances to the landfill. Millhouse and Rogers-Eubanks residents have stressed that they have long considered themselves to be of one community and have argued that putting a transfer station so close to the landfill would mean that community would further bear the burden of waste disposal after 37 years of proximity to the landfill.
The site is also adjacent to the Emerson Waldorf School, and several parents and board members and a student at the school expressed their concerns Tuesday night.
After hearing from the public, Commissioner Mike Nelson voiced his dissatisfaction with the turn of events.
“Where this got off track,†he said, “was with this last-minute, 11th-hour offer, which might not even be an offer.â€
Nelson said that Rogers-Eubanks residents had been promised that if they were against the Millhouse Road site, it would be removed from consideration.
Foushee was at the meeting with residents and Chapel Hill representatives in which the promise was made.
Nelson’s comments, Foushee said, “are not only his opinion, but fact.†She said that she indicated at the time that if the residents were against the idea, she was not interested in entertaining it, and added, “I’m still not interested in entertaining it.â€
On Wednesday, Nelson said reopening the process after first selecting Eubanks Road as the site of the transfer station was not only about siting a facility but, equally, about “rebuilding trust with a part of the community that feels, rightly or wrongly, that they’ve been lied to by local government.â€
“We were on the verge of rebuilding bridges and rebuilding trust,†Nelson said. That, he believes, has been squandered.
A transfer station timeline
March 2007: The county commission votes to place a solid waste transfer station on the site of the Eubanks Road landfill.
November 2007: Commissioners decide to reopen the search after an outcry from Rogers-Eubanks residents and others.
May 2008: Commissioners approve exclusionary criteria to guide it in its search for a site for a transfer station.
October 2008: The county narrows its search to three sites, eliminating the Eubanks Road location.
April 2009: The county identifies a 147-acre tract off N.C. 54 in the White Cross community as the best location for the station.
May 2009: Chapel Hill May Kevin Foy suggests a 32-acre Chapel Hill-owned property on Millhouse Road as a potential site for the transfer station.
One of the answers for this 11th hour proposal has to be $$$$. The cost to CH and Carrboro to run the waste trucks to White Cross or other distance places will be high and a unending draw on $$$. The cost of the land itself in White Cross was high.
As to Millhouse I agree with several who argue that IF this is done a restricted access road to I40 is the only answer. In the coming years Eubanks will be even more congested as schools, parks and development grows on this corridor. Only by giving waste trucks a seperate access will the Rogers Road area have any relief.
Lastly the timing of the proposal as the CH mayor decides to not run again and summer recesses upon us seems strange. This issue is a political football that has been tossed around for years. Leaders in Orange County need to MAKE A DECISION.