Waste transfer siting delayed

As the search for a suitable site for Orange County’s new waste transfer station enters its second year, it’s still not clear where, or when, commissioners will make a final decision.

They announced in November that they would not make their next move until Dec. 11, when Chairman Barry Jacobs said the board could make a selection or restart the search process from scratch.

The commissioners will have to decide soon or risk running out of landfill space before the transfer station is operational.

And with three new commissioners taking their seats on Dec. 1, the county could likely be heading for the latter.

“If that’s an option they’re considering I can’t see any end to it,” said Neloa Jones, co-chairwoman of the Rogers-Eubanks Coalition to End Environmental Racism.

The coalition was successful in advocating against the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood being named a top site for the new transfer station.

“No matter which area they consider, people are always going to be concerned.”

The siting process has been a long journey, especially for residents of the Rogers-Eubanks community.

Commissioners originally decided in March of 2007 to build the transfer station there.

But residents, who have been neighbors to the county landfill since 1972, protested the choice and forced the county to reopen a formal search for a site more than a year ago.

The Rogers-Eubanks site was removed from consideration in October.

Now three sites remain on the short list, all on a mile-long stretch of N.C. 54 just west of Orange Grove Road.

The pervasive sentiment is that no one wants to live next to a transfer station, which will serve as a daily collection point for all the county’s garbage before it is shipped to an out-of-county landfill.

Since the search focused in on the three sites in White Cross, residents of the area have also expressed their own concern that the county’s 80,000 tons of trash produced annually will all funnel through a building in their neighborhood.

“The communities around those areas are up in arms,” Jones said.

Residents have asked commissioners to investigate alternative options to current plans, including waste to energy technology and smaller plot size.

Commissioners have stressed in response that the search process has been thorough and transparent.

“We tried to make it as objective as possible,” Jacobs said.



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