Residents beware of water: UNC must be held accountable for wastewater site

Rural Orange County residents shouldn’t feel safe drinking well water next to an animal testing facility that repeatedly leaks treated wastewater.

The staff at the Bingham facility does not know how to properly handle a wastewater treatment system. Four leaks and spills in a period of four months is unacceptable.

UNC’s Bingham Facility is an animal testing facility that researches hemophilia and muscular dystrophy.

Until February, the wastewater system operated using a deemed permitted status. This means any change in building materials or additions to any outside organizations did not have to be reported to the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources.

This lack of accountability led to a system that does not function properly.

In December, an unknown amount of wastewater reached Collins Creek. The creek is on a 100-year-old flood plane adjacent to the facility. The creek water feeds into Jordan Lake, a drinking water reservoir.

Preserve Rural Orange filed a Public Records request for documents connected with the facility on June 11, 2009.

Five months later, UNC only granted access to materials if PRO paid thousands of dollars to view unspecified documents.

Residents need to know if the well water they’re drinking every day is contaminated.

UNC must allow the public to view documents from the last decade that pertain to the treated wastewater chemicals.

In December, N.C. DENR sent the University the first of three Notices of Violation. The University had not reported the runoff into Collins Creek until more than seven weeks after the incident occurred.

Although the University is now responding to the violations, they are not doing so in a timely manner.

The University must be continually held accountable for the incidents at the Bingham facility.