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Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1970s
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Rogers Road landfill opens
Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County opened a shared, unlined county landfill on Eubanks Road, built in late 1972 beside the historically Black Rogers-Eubanks community, whose residents were told it would close after about ten years. It was expanded repeatedly and ran for 41 years, closing in June 2013.
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Chapel Hill aldermen voted to buy the Eubanks Road site for the county landfill
Three months after the Chestnut Ridge site was abandoned, the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen voted unanimously to buy a 200-acre tract on Eubanks Road for $235,000. An unlined landfill was then built on about 80 acres of it, next to the Black Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood.
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New Hope Improvement Association sues to stop the Eubanks Road landfill
Opponents of the landfill formed the New Hope Improvement Association, which drew about 500 members, and filed a lawsuit in late September 1972. The suit was denied in early October.
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Officials signed the landfill agreement that carried promises to the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood
RENA's chronology records that Chapel Hill Mayor Howard Lee, Mayor Robert Wells Jr. and county commission chairman H.D. Bennett signed the full landfill agreement. Residents remember Lee promising that their road would be paved and that the filled site would become a recreation center for them.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
- 1980s
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Orange County begins discussing the first expansion of the Eubanks Road landfill
Ten years after the landfill opened, the county began discussing an expansion even though it had estimated the site would be full by 1985. Residents had been told the landfill would close after about ten years.
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Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County bought the Greene Tract as a possible landfill site
The three governments purchased the roughly 164-acre Greene Tract, just north of Rogers Road inside Chapel Hill's extraterritorial jurisdiction, for a future landfill. The county's landfill site search committee did not choose it, and its future use was argued over through the 1990s.
- 1990s
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Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Orange County begin a countywide search for a new landfill site
The three governing boards started a countywide search for the next sanitary landfill, carried out with a citizens' Landfill Search Committee and an engineering consultant. The Greene Tract, bought in 1984 for landfill use, was screened but not made a finalist.
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Chapel Hill Town Council recommends site OC-17 beside the Eubanks Road landfill for the next county landfill
After the search narrowed to four sites judged permittable, the council voted 7 to 2 to recommend a reduced site OC-17, adjacent to the existing landfill, as the county's next sanitary landfill. INDY Week reports that the county commissioners and the Hillsborough board also voted for it that month, with Carrboro Mayor Mike Nelson opposed.
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Chapel Hill authorizes buying land beside the landfill to widen its buffer
The council unanimously authorized the town manager to buy the 4.05-acre Wilson property adjoining the Eubanks Road landfill at $6,000 an acre to expand a minimal buffer, subject to approval by Carrboro and Orange County.
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Four governing boards hold a unified public hearing on a new landfill next to the Eubanks Road site
The Orange County commissioners, Chapel Hill council, Carrboro aldermen and Hillsborough commissioners took comment on site 17 and three alternatives. Neighbours including David Caldwell, Kathy Schinley and Cornelius Kirschner spoke against it, B.B. Olive presented a 39-signature petition, and Frank Emory, representing Duke University, said the poorest residents lived nearest site 17.
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Orange Regional Landfill takes Hurricane Fran yard waste free as Chapel Hill faces tens of thousands of tons of debris
The Orange Regional Landfill on Eubanks Road accepted yard waste at no charge until further notice. Town Manager Cal Horton estimated Chapel Hill had 25,000 to 40,000 tons of fallen limbs and trees and said the town would eventually remove curbside debris, while urging residents to haul debris to the landfill themselves.
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Assembly of Governments agrees compensation items for neighbors of the landfill
Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro met as an Assembly of Governments in 1997 to take up benefits for people living near the Orange Regional Landfill and agreed a set of compensation items. In 2007 Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton wrote that not all of them had been carried out.
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Orange County chooses to keep expanding the Eubanks Road landfill instead of opening a new site
With site OC-17 blocked, the county announced it would expand the existing landfill rather than close it. A new construction and demolition landfill was later built on the north side of Eubanks Road.
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Chapel Hill approves digging on the Neville Tract to build new landfill cells
The council voted 9 to 0 for a special use permit letting the Orange Regional Landfill take earth from the Neville Tract to build containment cells and for daily cover, with access across landfill property to Eubanks Road. Work was to begin by 1999 and end by 2007.
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Duke University easement to NASA stalls landfill candidate site OC-17
Chapel Hill's manager reported that Duke University had filed an easement in favor of NASA on candidate site OC-17, leaving the towns unable to test the land. The council voted 8 to 0 to have the town attorney write to the U.S. Attorney and called an Assembly of Governments for October 22, 1997.
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Chapel Hill sets conditions for new solid waste sites before handing control to the county
The council unanimously directed its Landfill Owners Group members to secure a construction and demolition waste site by fall 1998, naming land on the north side of Eubanks Road next to the landfill, with eminent domain if needed, and the Greene Tract as options. It said pending solid waste issues had to be settled before any change in governance.
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Chapel Hill backs countywide funding to extend water lines to the Rogers Road neighborhood
By a 7 to 2 vote the council said water service lines for the community around the landfill should be paid for from a countywide revenue source so that all county residents share the cost, and opposed using the sales tax for those benefits.
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The solid waste interlocal agreement set 60 acres of the Greene Tract aside as Headwaters Preserve
The 1999 Solid Waste Management Interlocal Agreement set the terms for disposing of the 104 acres that stayed in joint ownership and allowed 60 acres to be deeded to Orange County, which became the Headwaters Preserve. In 2002 the three governments adopted a resolution identifying acreage on the joint portion for preservation and affordable housing.
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Chapel Hill lets Orange County commissioners pick the next construction and demolition landfill site
With the existing construction and demolition landfill expected to fill by summer 2000, the council voted 9 to 0 to let the Board of Commissioners select an in-county replacement site on its behalf, citing time pressure and the expected transfer of solid waste authority to the county.
- 2000s
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Orange County agrees to build a new construction and demolition landfill tied to a recycling ordinance
Because the construction and demolition landfill on Eubanks Road would fill around 2003, the Board of Commissioners agreed to build a new one only if certain bulky materials had to be recycled. The Regulated Recyclable Materials Ordinance took effect on October 1, 2002.
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Robert Campbell petitioned Chapel Hill for bus service to the Rogers Road neighborhood
Minister Robert Campbell asked the Chapel Hill council to extend free transit service to the Rogers Road community, noting that it lacked sidewalks and sewer service and that children walked along the landfill's heavy truck route. He suggested rerouting underused Airport Road buses.
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Rogers–Eubanks Coalition to End Environmental Racism organizes
Residents of the Rogers Road and Eubanks Road neighborhood formed the Rogers-Eubanks Coalition to End Environmental Racism in 2007. At the September 20, 2007 Assembly of Governments meeting, member Neloa Jones asked officials to drop the neighborhood as a transfer station site, end solid-waste operations there by November 2009, and provide water and sewer service.
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Orange County commissioners vote to put a waste transfer station at the Eubanks Road landfill
The board voted unanimously to develop a solid waste transfer station at the landfill site, following its Solid Waste Advisory Board's recommendation, over objections from Rogers Road residents. The landfill was then expected to fill in 2010.
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Commissioners reopen the search for a transfer station site
After Rogers Road residents and the Coalition to End Environmental Racism pressed the county, the Board of Commissioners announced it would reopen its search for a transfer station site. Eubanks Road stayed on the list while consultant Olver Inc. drew up siting criteria.
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Commissioners drop Eubanks Road and choose two other transfer station candidates
Conceding that the 2007 choice had not adequately weighed its effect on Rogers Road, the commissioners voted 5 to 1 to pursue two other sites, the 143-acre Howell property and an OWASA tract in Bingham Township.
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Commissioners vote to truck county trash to Durham's transfer station
After OWASA refused to sell or swap land for a transfer station and Chapel Hill withdrew its Millhouse Road property, the Board of Commissioners voted to haul county trash to Durham's transfer station for three to five years while the towns and county weighed a longer-term plan.
- 2010s
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Orange County commissioners raised the landfill tipping fee to pay for Rogers Road remediation
Commissioners raised the tipping fee from $52 to $57 a ton to create a remediation fund of about $50,000 to $60,000 a year for water and sewer connections, cleanup of illegal dumping and a community center in Rogers Road. The county also moved $750,000 out of its solid waste reserve for the same purpose. Chapel Hill and Carrboro objected to the timing of the fee.
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Commissioners decide not to extend the life of the landfill
The Board of Commissioners voted not to extend the landfill and approved cleanup of 50 illegal dump sites. In April 2011 it had postponed a decision on deepening the landfill, which could have added capacity to 2018.
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Commissioners set the landfill's closing date and created the Historic Rogers Road Neighborhood Task Force
On the night the Orange County commissioners voted to close the landfill on June 30, 2013, they also authorized an eight-member task force, with two members each from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, the county and RENA, to recommend how to deliver sewer service and a community center and how to guard against displacement. An interim report was due that August and a final report to the Assembly of Governments on December 6, 2012.
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EPA accepted RENA's civil rights complaint over water and sewer service for investigation
The EPA Office of Civil Rights took up the question whether the Orange County Planning and Inspections Department had intentionally discriminated on the basis of race by denying water and sewer service to the African American residents of Rogers Road. RENA had filed the complaint with the U.S. Justice Department, which referred it to several federal agencies, and it was joined to an earlier complaint against OWASA accepted on November 23, 2009.
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Rogers Road landfill closes
The landfill closed at noon on Saturday, June 29, 2013 after 41 years, with a ceremony at which Rogers Road residents symbolically locked the service entrance. The closure plan called for a synthetic cap covered with soil and vegetation, vented so that the county's methane recovery system, which feeds power to UNC buildings, could keep running.
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