Agenda - 05-04-1987 - Laserfiche WebLink

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2 01b The remaining 79 acres have not been developed, but Chapel Hill does possess a state permit for this parcel's use as a landfill and does plan to open it to landfilling once the northern portion's capacity is exhausted in the next several years. The town is now having an engineering site plan drawn up for the south 79. Landfill Life-Expectancy. In a letter dated March 14, 1986, Chapel Hill's Director of Public Works Bruce Heflin stated that the Eubanks site could. be expected to serve Orange County's landfilling needs for another 11 years. The land north of Eubanks, he said, should last four years, after which the town would operate on the south 79 for an additional seven years. Certain developments that have emerged since last March suggest that this estimate is too optimistic and must be revised. Figures provided by Chapel Hill Public Works show that the tonnage of solid waste being interred at the Eubanks site has taken alarming leaps upward in the past three years. The figures for just one year, fiscal 1986, illustrate how unexpected these upward surges have been: Fiscal Year '86 Predicted Tons Actual Tons Difference 67,000 82,427 23%4 Heflin's department has revised its projections for fiscal 1987 to approximately 100,000 tons. Citizens' Complaints The task force spent much of its first two years attempting to answer the complaints of residents living near the current landfill. The complaints have been numerous: unpleasant odors emanating from the landfill; loud noises made by heavy machinery used at the landfill; dangerously heavy traffic by refuse carriers travelling through communities in which many families with children resided; speeding by refuse carriers through those same neighborhoods; dumping in the landfill during supposedly unauthorized hours; spillage along roads used by inadequately covered trucks; the presence of vultures, rats and wild dogs near the site; declining property values; failure by the town to protect ground and surface water by monitoring incoming materials for the presence of hazardous wastes; and most seriously, fears of actual ground and surface water contamination. The task force has managed on one level or another to check the validity of most of these charges at least once, often having to rely on town and county investigations. Most of these investigations have been conducted only once, and such isolated observations do little to either confirm or refute the residents' claims.