Orange County NC Website
The following represents a summary of ideas expressed at a community meeting <br />this past Sunday evening. The participants in that meeting hoped to present a similar, <br />more polished statement to the Board at their regularly scheduled meeting on June 21 s`. <br />Since we had only a few hours advance knowledge of tonight's meeting, I undertook to <br />type up this outline. The wording here is mine, but I feel the feelings and ideas are widely <br />shared in our parts of Orange and Durham counties. <br />Tom Campbell <br />8208 Bromley Road <br />Hillsborough, NC <br />Orange County should drop its plans to locate a construction and <br />demoliton landfill and firing range along the borders of Orange and Durham <br />counties. <br />There are some extremely serious problems with using this site for <br />these projects. <br />Water Quality <br />The landfill would pose a direct threat to the water supply of the City of Durham. <br />Most of this land lies within 2,000 feet of the North Fork of the Little River. <br />Indeed, the property borders the river directly on its northern edge. U.S. Geological <br />Survey maps show that two streams run from the property directly into the river. A third, <br />similar stream runs just below the property's southern boundary. All of the property <br />slopes down to the river. The land falls away steeply to the river just off the property's <br />lengthy eastern boundary. <br />The Little River serves as water supply for Durham and much of the Research <br />Triangle Park. Although a C &D landfill is supposed to accept only non -toxic <br />construction debris, there is realistically no way to insure that prohibited substances <br />would not be dumped at the site, hidden in large loads of debris. <br />Transportation <br />This site is a very long way from the prime areas of construction in Orange <br />County, around Chapel Hill. How would large, heavy trucks full of construction waste <br />get to this site from that area? The most obvious route is 15 -501 to I -85 to Guess Road. <br />This is a route that lies almost entirely within Durham County, over roads already <br />overburdened with traffic and ending in a dangerous, winding, high -speed 2 lane road. <br />Other possible routes all appear to involve 2 lane residential roads like Pleasant Green <br />Road, St Mary's Road and New Sharon Church Road. Trucks taking NC 86 and going <br />(illegally) through Hillsborough are another possibility. Whatever routes are used, it is <br />clear that the transportation of a large volume of waste to this site will be a serious <br />problem. <br />