Rogers Road Waste Transfer Station - the blog

Thanks, Stan.

While I thought the attendent article regarding the transfer station by Taylor Sisk was reasonably fair, the photo above it is very misleading as it shows a bulldozer in the landfill. What does that have to do with the transfer station?

The "wet" landfill is closing in few years. There will not be another. Yes, some solid waste activities will continue at Eubanks, but the one with by far the most environmental impacts will close.

Certainly a transfer station will have some environmental impacts, but nothing like a "wet" landfill. Part of the problem I have with CEER is they continue to conflate the two and ascribe enviromental impacts of a wet landfill to a transfer station.

The attendant article was from a 15,000 word series running in The Carrboro Citizen. It would be nice if someone had asked if it was OK to cut and paste the whole thing and even nicer if we'd been asked ahead of time and given credit for producing the story.

Previous articles here:
http://www.carrborocitizen.com/main/rogers-road/

In order to see the relationship between a transfer station and landfills (along with leachate ponds, hazardous waste collection, industrial waste, the burying of animals, the unloading of vermin into communities, and other solid waste faciltities in general), one would need to understand that all of these facilities adversely impact the environmental health and safety of nearby communities. The first article article in the Carrboro Citizen provided excellent background to the environmental justice movement in NC as well environmental justice issues in general. The second article was also quite informative. Until people understand the connection between these issues and various types of facilities, they will always, unfortunately, scratch their heads and convince themselves that the issues are distinct and unrelated. Oh, well . . . .

Thanks. It's an important issue to keep in mind. While we often focus on large impacts initiated mainly by one entity (Carolina North, Shoppes at Jones Ferry, major developments), the press has a responsibility to review and keep in the public eye the large impacts we all contribute to like garbage, air pollution and so on.
It's more difficult to connect the dots between our values, public policy and the behaviors and patterns of the community, but quite necessary as we see in the Rogers Road case.
The series will continue after the holidays.

Kirk Ross
Editor

Thanks again to the Carrboro Citizen and Taylor Sisk for producing another interesting and informative article focusing on solid waste and environmental issues.
To Mark Marcoplos, in particular, the idea of asking Chapel Hill and Carrboro to consider putting their heads together and discussing ways to handle their own garbage has indeed been broached, not by CEER as a group, but by a small CEER subcommittee, many, many weeks ago. It never got to CEER's agenda, though, for several reasons, which I will try to explain. Please also keep in mind that I am speaking from my not-always-so-good memory, so I will try my best to speak carefully and as accurately as possible.

At one point, a CEER member advised us that the interlocal agreement between the municipalities and OC was soon due to expire. Mark Chilton had also approached me to discuss the transfer station issues after my 9/20 presentation to the Assembly of Governments at which time I thought he had suggested that Carrboro might consider making a such move not to participate w/OC. (Caveat: I was very, very distracted when Mayor Chilton was speaking to me, so I may or may not have heard or understood him correctly, nor have I talked with him since that time.)

However, I did mentioned this to two other CEER members during a letter-writing night. One member even got a copy of the interlocal agreement (which I have yet to have time to read). By this time, however, the other member said she had spoken to Chilton and that he had stated that Carrboro would not consider making such a move. (Again, caveat: I could be mistaken: all of this was discussed weeks, months ago, so I could be mistaken about what was reported to me.) At any rate, we did not discuss the topic again, partly for these reason, partly b/c we simply never got time to do so.

It is absolutely true that CEER's plate is VERY full at this time and primarily focused on the transfer station and supporting efforts to ensure a properly conducted new site search.

DISCLAIMER: My views here do not reflect any views endorsed by CEER. I am expressing my own personal views: I myself have NEVER supported transferring garbage out of the county and never will.

CEER is building its base: at the moment, we need more people (environmentalists, social justice supporters, and the like) who are willing to join our efforts, not just people who tell us what we ought to be doing. We need more people who are reasonably well-informed, who can do research, make presentations, participate in meetings, who can chair subcommittees. Unfortunately, a lot of times, the writing of documents falls on a small group of CEER members--most of whom are husbands, wives, parents, have full-time jobs, who are full-time students, and the like.