Agenda - 02-21-2017 - 6-a - Minutes

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22 1 Commissioner Jacobs recalled a neighborhood near Governor Burke Road where residents 2 thought they had a cancer cluster. The Health Department got the State to investigate and there 3 was no evidence of that. 4 5 Commissioner Jacobs said part of why the county paid to put public water into the Rogers Road 6 community was because people were complaining about their water quality. 7 8 Commissioner Marcoplos recalled that none of the governments wanted to investigate the 9 presence of contaminants in the soils around Rogers Road because then they would have been 10 responsible for clean up. 11 12 Commissioner Jacobs said he was not sure how those concerns were dealt with, although he 13 recalled that the County had dealt with some of it. 14 15 Gayle Wilson, Solid Waste Management Director, said the question was raised in the late 16 1990's about whether the landfill was contaminating the Rogers Road water supply. 17 Environmental Health did a large number of environmental tests in the neighborhood and 18 concluded that there were no indicators. All a resident had to do was call for a test; even if it 19 was four times a year Environmental Health did it. There were contaminants found related to 20 landfills, but for the most part it was the residents' failing septic systems that were contaminating 21 the wells. That seemed to be the overriding issue of water there. The Board extended public 22 water to the neighborhood not too long after that so the contaminated wells should not be so 23 much of an issue over there now. 24 25 Commissioner Jacobs recalled that Tara Fikes, former Director of Housing and Community 26 Development, had informed the Board that some county residents did not have access to 27 functional wells and septic systems, but she could never pin down who they were. We might 28 look at the US Census data to see if there are still people reporting that they don't have 29 functional wells or septic systems. 30 31 David Stancil added that in groundwater studies conducted in the late 1990s near NC-54 South, 32 in the southeastern corner of the county, the Chatham granitic pluton soils showed elevated 33 levels of radon. This is not significant with regard to drinking water, but can be a concern with 34 regard to the aeration of the radon: hot showers would have aerated that radon. About a decade 35 ago Environmental Health distributed flyers to residents in the area about this. 36 37 Commissioner Jacobs said Fairview has higher levels of arsenic in its soils; before they built the 38 park there the county investigated to see if there was some manmade source but it turned out to 39 be naturally occurring. 40 41 General Framework for Making the County More Resilient 42 The group then focused on a more general discussion, prompted by these three questions on 43 the agenda: What policy issues other than the three examples are especially vulnerable to 44 external forces of change? What external forces of change other than the ones already 45 discussed in the three examples are of interest/concern to you? What are some ideas that might 46 be applied across the County's policy agenda for making the County more resilient? 47 48 Bonnie Hammersley distributed a handout with examples of potential additional policy issues 49 relevant to the general resilience discussion. She said these issues have not been included in 50 other County planning documents, such as the CI P. They are items they have heard about in 51 other forums and from other entities that she thought the Board should be aware of. 22