Storyline
How Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County searched for a site for a new county landfill between 1989 and 1992: the search committee and the Landfill Owners Group, the 15 areas cut to four, the Duke Forest and Eubanks Road fights, the hearings and the 1992 vote to drill test holes.
In briefWith the Eubanks Road landfill due to fill by 1997, Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County began searching in 1989 for a new site. A citizens' committee named 15 areas in 1991 and cut them to four, drawing protests over Duke Forest and Eubanks Road and hearings of hundreds of residents. In May 1992 engineers got the go-ahead to drill test holes at the four sites.
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In October 1989 Town Manager David Taylor reported that Orange County's Eubanks Road landfill would be full by 1997, and that the Greene Tract on Homestead Road could no longer be used because houses had been built around it. On October 23 the Orange County Board of Commissioners approved a process for choosing a new site that gave Chapel Hill and Carrboro a part, with a Landfill Search Committee to set criteria and recommend sites. In 1990 the countywide search began with the citizens' committee and an engineering consultant; the Greene Tract was screened but not made a finalist. By March 9, 1990 the Orange Regional Landfill Owners Group of Chapel Hill, Carrboro and county representatives had chosen 10 citizens for the committee.
On January 23, 1991 the committee named 15 areas under consideration across rural Orange County, and residents near them objected. On March 26 the Orange County Greens called the search biased and asked for a new one; Gayle Wilson, Chapel Hill's solid waste administrator, said it would not start over. On September 4 the committee put site 5, on Turkey Farm Road near Duke Forest, in reserve as more than 100 residents, many from the Coalition Against a Site Five Landfill, cheered. On September 25 it put site 2, east of the Cane Creek reservoir, back on the active list. On November 20 it cut the list to four: Site 2 near Bingham Township, Sites 9 and 11 just north of Hillsborough and Site 17 beside the present landfill, taking in the Blackwood division of Duke Forest. It put in reserve Site 3, near Horace Williams Airport, and Site 4 off Davis Road.
On January 18, 1992 Love Your Mother, a Carrboro environmental group, demonstrated at Weaver Street Market against the Duke Forest site and called for a "zero garbage" recycling policy instead. On January 27 a member of Stop Eubanks Area Landfill asked the Chapel Hill Town Council to freeze the Landfill Owners Group's effort to buy 15 more acres next to the landfill, which Wilson said would supply cover soil. On February 5 the council agreed that a waste plan must be made with full public involvement, and council member Alan Rimer asked the owners group to hold a hearing. About 800 people came to its February 26 hearing at Orange High School, where Chapel Hill residents opposing Sites 3 and 17 faced Hillsborough-area residents opposing Sites 9 and 2, and Norman Christensen, dean of Duke's School of the Environment, asked that the Duke Forest site be dropped.
In early March the committee named Sites 3 and 17 as finalists after voting 7 to 5 to return Site 3 to active consideration. On March 11 the owners group required it to add two more sites, and state officials said a rule keeping landfills 10,000 feet from airports ruled out Site 3. At a March 18 hearing on a countywide waste plan, speakers urged more recycling and reuse before a new landfill. On March 25, before about 300 people, some of them heckling, the committee voted 6 to 5 to begin drilling at Sites 2, 9, 11 and 17. In early April the commissioners voted 3 to 2 against cutting UNC's tipping fee for its power plant ash, Commissioner Stephen Halkiotis calling the cut favoritism and Donald Willhoit saying the board might vote again. On May 11 the Chapel Hill Town Council let Joyce Engineering drill test holes at the four sites, though 18 of the 49 landowners had refused the engineers access.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 17 dated events in the chronology →
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Map of the Duke Forest's Durham Division issued in 2005 by the Office of the Duke Forest at Duke University, with the Korstian Division on the reverse. Both sides carry legends and rules for recreation and safety on the forest trails, which reach into Durham, Orange and Alamance counties.
Rachel Frankel's Duke University honors paper of 1984 on the Couch tract in the Durham Division of Duke Forest, a history of agricultural land use from 1750 to 1950. The Couch family, family farms and rural land use in Orange County are its subjects. A photocopied typescript, 97 leaves with maps and a bibliography.
A 2005 map of Duke Forest's Blackwood and Eno divisions in Orange County and toward Alamance County. The map concerns forestry and trails in the university teaching forest.
Robert Shapiro's 2004 measurements of radon-222 escaping from forest soil and of gas exchange between the canopy and the atmosphere, carried out in the Duke Forest. The work covers radon measurement and gas exchange in plants in Orange County. A short scientific study, with a bibliography on leaves 17 and 18, of the research forest that spreads across the county line.
Emily Eidenier Pearce's history of Rogers Road, the historically African American neighborhood on the edge of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and of what happened to it after Orange County opened its landfill next door in 1972. Drawing on interviews with residents, the book records the neighborhood's origins, family life, churches and customs, and then the environmental and social burdens of decades beside the landfill. Privately issued in 2009, 298 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
A June 19, 1996, report by the Town of Chapel Hill Planning Department presenting 1990 census data on the areas around the Orange regional landfill and four alternative sites under consideration for a new landfill, prepared under North Carolina General Statutes 160A-325 and 153A-136(c), which call for such review before a landfill is sited.
Kathleen King Buck's master of landscape architecture project at North Carolina State University, proposing design alternatives for reusing the Orange County landfill site. Completed in 2001 in 63 leaves with illustrations, plans and maps, several of them in color. Topics include earthwork fills in the county along with the design, construction and environmental aspects of waste disposal sites.
Lillian G. Woo applied contingent valuation, the method economists use to price goods that are not traded, to the siting of sanitary landfills, with Orange County among the North Carolina cases. Environmental policy, public goods valuation and landfill location are the subjects. A 26 page landfill survey sits in a pocket at the end, and the bibliography runs from leaf 249 to 259. Dated 1996.
Joyce Engineering of Greensboro prepared this February 1995 report on preliminary engineering evaluations for the Orange regional landfill site search, examining candidate sites for a new landfill. One volume of various pagings with illustrations and maps, issued in a loose leaf binder. Topics include sanitary landfills, sanitary engineering and engineering geology in Orange County.
Brett Henrikson's 1994 honors paper at Duke University works through the economics of siting a municipal solid waste landfill, using Orange County as its case study. Topics include the location and the costs of sanitary landfills, both in the county and in the United States generally. A typescript of 41 numbered leaves followed by 74 more that are unnumbered.
A supplemental packet of information for the Orange County landfill site search, dated 26 September 1994 and prepared by Joyce Engineering of Greensboro. One volume of various pagings with illustrations and maps, four further pages of maps inserted. It belongs to the run of consultant reports produced while the county looked for a regional landfill site.
Leigh A. Peek's case study of the Coalition to Remove Site OC-5, the group that organized against a proposed municipal solid waste landfill in Orange County. The paper uses the fight as an example of mass political participation at the local level, concerning land use, political participation and sanitary landfills in the county. Dated 1992, bibliography on leaves 29 to 30.
Dated 11 November 1991, a report of additional services carried out by Joyce Engineering of Greensboro in the search for a site for the Orange regional landfill. One volume of various pagings with illustrations and maps, issued in a spiral binding. Topics include the location of sanitary landfills and engineering geology in Orange County.
Triangle J Council of Governments surveyed solid waste activities across Region J in 1980, taking in Chatham, Durham, Johnston, Lee, Orange and Wake counties. Refuse collection, disposal practice and sanitary landfills are treated county by county. Preparation was financed in part by a state planning assistance grant.
Roughly 2,000 items in 6.5 linear feet kept as the papers of Michael R. Nelson, born 1963, dated from about 1890 to 2012, collection 70140 in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC. Topics include politics and government in Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Orange County, campaign paraphernalia, and gay activists and politicians in North Carolina, naming Joseph A. Herzenberg, 1941 to 2007.
Orange County's landfill, followed through newspaper clippings, photocopied articles, promotional materials, reports and maps. Undated folder in box 32 of the Carrboro and Orange County series, Chapel Hill Historical Society Vertical File Collection (CHHS.001).
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