Editor’s note: This story is the first in a series that will examine issues related to environmental justice and to the fight of the Rogers and Eubanks roads community to be relieved of what they allege to be an undue burden — 35 years of a landfill and now the threat of a waste transfer station.

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

Robert Bullard is the Ware Distinguished Professor of Sociology and director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University and is often called “the father of the environmental justice movement.” His book Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality, published in 1990, is considered by many observers of environmental justice to be a seminal work.

In October, Bullard attended the North Carolina Environmental Justice Summit, hosted by the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network, in Franklin County, where he met Rev. Robert Campbell, a member of the Rogers-Eubanks Coalition to End Environmental Racism and a longtime leader in the Rogers Road community.
Bullard says that in talking with Rev. Campbell and in listening to him speak at the summit, what he heard was a story that’s all too familiar — another chapter in an extended narrative of the treatment of underserved and inadequately represented communities.

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In 1978, a trucking company intentionally sprayed more than 30,000 gallons of PCB-laced oil along 210 miles of roadways in 14 North Carolina counties – the largest dumping of PCB that had yet been documented in the U.S.

It was four years before the EPA and the state of North Carolina began the clean-up, and in 1982 Gov. Jim Hunt selected the community of Afton in Warren County as the site for a landfill for the contaminated soil. Afton was more than 84 percent black and Warren County as a whole had the highest percentage of blacks in the state – 64 percent as compared with 24 percent for the state – and had the 97th lowest per capita income of North Carolina’s 100 counties.

Research indicated that the site was not the most suitable for a toxic landfill: The water table was ten feet or less below the surface and the community received all its drinking water from wells.

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By Valarie Schwartz 

Although Wednesday had been Halloween, eeriness hung in the air Thursday afternoon as I walked into the Estes Street Post Office to find nobody in line and two clerks waiting to serve me — in a place where there is usually a wait.
With a little time to kill before going to the Women’s Center’s annual Tea with Lee (Smith) event at Foster’s Market, I popped into University Mall where employees outnumbered customers wherever I went. The paintings of Jane Filer hanging in Tyndall Galleries pulled me in — her freedom with shapes in predominating primary colors provide such happy paintings it was comforting to be offered assistance just to be able to share by joy.

En route to Foster’s it seemed that even the streets had been vacated — where was everyone at 4:30 p.m.?

The answer was at Foster’s — which was packed and abuzz.

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Jamezetta Bedford tosses another campaign sign in the trunk. She has served on the school board since 2003 and will retain her seat.

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

Newcomer Mia Burroughs and three incumbents were elected to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education on Tuesday.

Board Chair Jamezetta Bedford, Mike Kelley and Annetta Streater kept their seats on the board.
Burrroughs garnered the highest number of votes — about 21.7 percent. Candidate Gary Wallach came in fifth place, trailing Kelley by just over 1 percent with 17.3 percent of the vote.

Longtime board member Liz Carter did not run for re-election.

Burroughs said she was extremely grateful to her supporters and felt “totally exhilarated and a little numb.”
“At this point, I have to change gears,” she said. “I need to spend some time learning how to be a good board member.”
Bedford said she looked forward to continuing the board’s work on Professional Learning Communities and improving district math scores.

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Lydia Lavelle (left) shares a laugh with her partner, Alicia Stemper. Lavelle was elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen, receiving the most votes of any candidate

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Lydia Lavelle, a first-time officeholder and resident of the newly annexed northern portion of Carrboro, gathered the most votes in the election for the Carrboro Board of Aldermen.

Lavelle took 1,656 votes, or roughly 25 percent of the vote, to top the list of alderman candidates. She was followed by two-term incumbent Joal Hall Broun and Alderman Dan Coleman, who was appointed to the board in 2006 and was running for election for the first time. Broun received 1,457 votes, or 22 percent, and Coleman won 1,305 votes — 20 percent.

The winners were followed by Katrina Ryan, running for the second time, with 927 votes, for 14 percent of the vote, and planning board member Sharon Cook, who received 861 votes, or 13 percent.
Frank Abernethy received 256 votes, or 4 percent.

In the mayor’s race, 74 percent opted to return incumbent Mark Chilton, who won a total of 1,709 votes. Challenger Brian Voyce received 426 votes, or 18 percent, and Chuck Morton received 158 votes, for 7 percent.

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Photo courtesy of Jim Wallace

UNC News Services 

Participants in and witnesses to desegregation protests that rocked Chapel Hill in the 1960s will speak in a free public program at 5:45 p.m. Nov. 8 in UNC’s Wilson Library.

They will recall their experiences and celebrate republication of John Ehle’s The Free Men, a landmark book about the era that was first released in 1965. Winston-Salem publisher Press 53 reissued the book in February. Ehle will participate in the UNC program with:

* Karen Parker, an  activist in the 1963-64 sit-ins and the first black female to graduate from UNC, now an editor with the Winston-Salem Journal;

* Wayne King, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist with the Detroit Free Press and New York Times, who covered the protests as an editor at the Daily Tar Heel. King wrote a new afterword for the new edition of Ehle’s book;

* Jim Wallace, a UNC alumnus and retired curator of photography for the Smithsonian, whose photographs appear in the book; and

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By Taylor Sisk and Susan Dickson
Staff Writers

The Orange County Board of Commissioners has decided to reopen the search for a solid-waste transfer station after having voted unanimously last March to build the station on the site of a county landfill on Eubanks Road. Residents of the community – led by the Rogers-Eubanks Coalition to End Environmental Racism – have alleged environmental racism, saying 35 years of a landfill is enough of a burden for one community to bear, and had demanded the search be reopened.

Though it wasn’t on the board’s Monday night agenda, Chair Moses Carey opened the meeting by saying that he’d had “a change of heart,” and that while he felt the decision had been made to site the transfer station on Eubanks Road for “some very good reason, and I still believe those were good reasons at the time,” he now felt otherwise.

“I’ve had a change of mind about the location of the transfer station on the Eubanks Road site,” Carey said.

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The North Carolina Botanical Garden is hosting a benefit concert for the Stillhouse Bottom Nature Preserve on November 17, 2007 from 6-9 p.m.. The Stillhouse Bottom Band will perform. RSVP by November 13 at 962-0522. A $20 donation is suggested.

Limited on-site child care is available for an Owls of Stillhouse Bottom program hosted by Cynthia Fox of the Wild Bird Center.

The Stillhouse Bottom Nature Preserve is owned by the Botanical Garden Foundation, Inc., the non-profit membership support organization of the NCBG, and is a dedicated, permanently protected North Carolina Nature Preserve.

Community Dialog Across Borders will be held November 9 and 10. Moderated by UNC professor Maria Deguzmán, with Pulitzer prize-winning special guests Hector Tobar and Jose Galvez, the presentation will combine literary and visual art to generate dialog about Latino immigration.

On Friday it will be held from 6:30-9 p.m. at Central Carolina Community College Pittsboro campus in Building 2. 764 West St, Pittsboro. On Saturday it will be held from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. at the Fearrington Barn at Fearrington Village in Pittsboro. Friday’s presentation will be simultaneously interpreted in Spanish. Both events are free and open to the public.

The Orange County Department of Social Services is currently recruiting sponsors and donors for its annual holiday programs. The programs, sponsored by the Orange County Department of Social Services in partnership with Toys for Tots and Balloons and Tunes, provide new toys and clothing for low-income, at-risk Orange County children during the holidays.

In the Share Your Holiday program, in partnership with Balloons and Tunes, families submit wish-lists that often include clothing and toys. Donors may choose to sponsor a family or give money that will be used to purchase items for families that do not get sponsored.

In partnership with Toys for Tots, The Toy Chest is a holiday store in which eligible parents can select 2-3 new toys per child to supplement their holiday. The Toy Chest is designed to serve families at 200% of poverty that are not being served by another DSS holiday program.

Anyone interested in donating new children’s toys to the Toy Chest or sponsoring a family through the Share Your Holiday program, is encouraged to contact Serena McPherson or Beachy Sanders at 245-2800. Corporate sponsors can contact Sharon Hinton at 245-2840.

A bat found in Hillsborough tested positive for rabies last week at the State Laboratory of Public Health.
The bat was found in a home near Walker Road and NC Highway 57. The resident had four cats and two dogs, all of which were currently vaccinated against rabies. Because potential exposure could not be ruled out, the pets received rabies booster shots, which are required within 72 hours.

In addition, because bat bites are small and often go unnoticed, an Orange County communicable disease nurse will work with the residents to determine if medical treatment is needed.

So far this year, Orange County Animal Services has received 19 positive rabies tests. If any possible exposure to a bat, raccoon or fox is suspected, contact Animal Control at 245-2075 or call 911.

Voters across the state rejected the proposed land transfer tax, shooting down the referendum in 16 counties. Chatham County voted 8,265 against and 3,715 for. Total voter turnout in Chatham County was about 32 percent.

This year the state gave counties a choice between a 0.4 percent land transfer tax or a sales tax increase of a quarter-cent. Chatham County commissioners had pledged to give land transfer tax proceeds, a projected $3.5 million in 2009, to schools.