With the Orange County landfill now officially set to close in June 2013, the Orange County Board of Commissioners has chosen to truck the county’s trash to a waste transfer station in Durham.
Although billed as a temporary solution, Carrboro and Chapel Hill officials are unhappy with the decision, expressing concern about having no control over where the trash is dumped after leaving Durham. The municipalities have not yet decided whether they too will contract with Durham.
Chapel Hill Town Council member Penny Rich said she is concerned that trash trucked outside county lines could be dumped in someone else’s backyard, creating environmental and health hazards Orange County would have no way to fix.
“To close the landfill and send it somewhere else, creating another Rogers Road, just shows we didn’t learn our lesson,†Rich said.
However, while many elected officials have voiced their concerns about where the trash would go from Durham, many don’t seem to know exactly where it would go, or even if it would be staying in North Carolina.
As it turns out, that trash does stay in state and does more good than officials might anticipate. From Durham’s waste transfer station, trash is trucked to Montgomery County, N.C., to the Uwharrie Regional Landfill, managed by Republic Services Inc., a private waste disposal company.
According to Matthew Woodard, interim county manager for Montgomery County, the land the landfill occupies is deeded to Republic by the county and then split into quadrants, which are filled with trash. The county gets $2.36 per ton of garbage taken to the landfill, which goes to funding county operations.
“I guess people would think you would never say you’re fortunate to have a landfill, but we are,†Woodard said.
Montgomery County was once filled with textile mills that employed a large percentage of the county’s population, but when the mills started moving overseas, Woodard said, having the landfill in the county helped keep them afloat.
Woodard estimates that around 25 percent of the county is currently unemployed, with 12.8 percent collecting unemployment benefits.
“We would have been in dire straits if it had not been for that landfill,†Woodard said.
Opened in October 2006, the Uwharrie Regional Landfill accepts trash from Greensboro, Durham and, on occasion, Chatham County. Even with the addition of Orange County’s trash to Durham’s load, Woodard said the landfill is projected to stay open for 15 more years.
While environmental issues are a concern for the county, especially since most of the land in Montgomery County belongs to the Uwharrie National Forest, Woodard said it is a risk the county has to take.
“We are very sensitive to the environment, but at the same time we have to recognize we have to meet the needs of the citizens,†he said.
— Rose Laudicina