Residents, civil rights center challenge site near landfill on Millhouse Road
By Taylor Sisk, Staff Writer
As the Orange County Board of Commissioners prepares to vote on the county’s future solid-waste disposal options, one site under consideration is a county-owned plot of land on Millhouse Road. But Millhouse Road homeowners, with support from the UNC Center for Civil Rights, are now challenging the legality of consideration of that site, saying that sales deeds for the property and adjacent and surrounding properties explicitly state that they are to be used for residential purposes only.
The commission is scheduled to vote at its Dec. 7 meeting on whether to place a transfer station on the Millhouse property (called the Paydarfar site after its previous owner) or on a previously approved site off N.C. 54 near Orange Grove Road, or to pursue a deal with Durham County to use its transfer facility.
Residents of the Millhouse community, those of the Rogers-Eubanks community and other county residents have protested the proposed Millhouse site, questioning why it was submitted for consideration many months into the search process and without having been subjected to the same exclusionary-criteria process as previously proposed sites, and because it’s within a half mile of the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood, which has lived with the county’s landfill for 37 years.
Now a new challenge has been mounted.
The deed to the Paydarfar property includes a restrictive covenant stating that the “property hereinabove described shall be used for residential purposes only.â€
This restriction is included in the deed for the August 1979 sale of the Paydarfar property from its original owners, Eugene and Julia Blackwood, to Francis and Jenny Chan and is referenced in the subsequent transfers of the property, including the deed for the sale of the property in 2007 from the Paydarfar family to the county.
Restrictive covenants are legally enforceable limitations on the use of a property. They’re commonly used by homeowners’ associations to restrict residents from certain practices – for example, painting a home a garish color or parking an industrial vehicle in the driveway. In such a scenario, all homeowners are bound by the same restrictions and are thus in a position to enforce them.
Mark Dorosin, senior managing attorney at the UNC Center for Civil Rights, said he believes those homeowners on Millhouse Road whose properties hold the same restrictions have the right to challenge the use of the Paydarfar property for nonresidential use – that the restrictive covenants were “clearly intended to benefit and burden all adjoining property owners.â€
One of those property owners, Cornelius Kirschner, said he had believed there was a statutory limit on the restrictions. The deed for one property, belonging to the Sluder family, does in fact indicate that the restrictions were good for only 29 years, but the others include no such expiration.
“This is good,†Kirschner said. “I’m pleased with this development.â€
“Our belief is that these restrictive covenants are active, enforceable and binding,†Dorosin said, “and that the neighbors who bought their properties subject to the same restrictions have the authority†to challenge the use of the Paydarfar tract for industrial use.
“We believe the commissioners should take this into account going forward,†Dorosin said.
“It looks to me as though people have a right to enforce these restrictions that the property only be used for residential,†said Alfred Brophy, a UNC professor of law who specializes in property issues. They appear valid and enforceable.
“All that’s required is one person to come forward.â€
Dorosin said he feels the county is “rushing forward with the site without any adequate consideration, deliberately ignoring the clear intent and vision of the Blackwoods and all of the property owners who bought land throughout the area, and is creating an industrial zone in a rural residential community.â€
“The Blackwoods dream was to have a rural development out here,†Kirschner said.
During the hour allotted for public comment at the last commissioners’ meeting, on Nov. 17, county residents spoke in opposition to placing the facility on the Millhouse Road tract, and on Tuesday night the Carrboro Board of Aldermen passed a unanimous resolution in support of the Rogers-Eubanks community.
Meanwhile, Rogers-Eubanks organizer Robert Campbell traveled to the White House on Nov. 20th, where he spoke with Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson about his community’s ongoing public-health and environmental-justice concerns.
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