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Memorandum From: Environmental Advisory Board, Town of Carrboro To: Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Orange County staff and advisory board members Subject: Recommendation to investigate a large photovoltaic installation at the Eubanks Road landfill site The Carrboro Environmental Advisory Board (EAB) has been investigating opportunities for solar energy installations in and around the town limits. This memorandum reports on our findings and recommendation to investigate a large photovoltaic installation at the Orange County landfill. In a meeting at our invitation, staff from Strata Solar in Chapel Hill identified their minimum requirements for large -scale installations on the order of 4.5megawatts (MW). According to the Solar Energy Industry Association, this size array can power about 500 homes. The requirements include: • 45 acres or more of open land • proximity to three -phase power lines and substations, and • affordable leasing arrangements A preliminary search on Google Maps turned up only one suitable site in the Chapel Hill - Carrboro area, namely the retired landfill on Eubanks Road. Tim Turner from the EAB spoke with Gayle Wilson, Solid Waste Director, and Blair Pollock, Solid Waste Planner for Orange County. They identified two suitable sites: 1) a 45 -acre, unlined site north of Eubanks Road, closed in 1996, and 2) a 26 -acre, lined site south of Eubanks Road, closed in 2013. These sites are shown in Figure 1 below. We note that a 110 KV power line borders the south and east boundaries of the property, and that a facility called the "Eubanks Road Tap" is found at the east end of the property. It is likely that a fourth to a half of this acreage will be unsuitable for solar panels, due to the direction of the slope. Both areas have active landfill gas recovery on -site, which would need to be accommodated. Also, since both sites are still recovering landfill gas, they should both be considered to be possibly physically unstable (subject to settling). Both of these considerations could pose potential problems for a solar installation on the site. To assess the technical feasibility of solar installations at Eubanks Road, Tim Turner conducted a brief search for existing solar installations on landfills with landfill gas recovery. The purpose was to determine whether a solar installation was feasible at the Eubanks Road site. No attempt has been made to identify all available approaches.