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More than a history Molly Smith, Southern Neighbor May 30, 2017 Just two miles down the road from a community center that gladly serves as the stomping grounds for minority children of all ages lies the dying remains of an 80-‐ acre landfill that came at a price for the Rogers Road community. Some of these children are part of the newest generation of families that Minister Robert Campbell calls the “groundbreakers” — those who have been around since the start of the effects caused by the landfill and pushed for change. Campbell, the current president of the Rogers Road Neighborhood Association — RENA — started getting involved in community politics when the now-‐closed landfill started to cause tangible issues. “The water began to smell bad, and it would get into your clothes,” Campbell said. “So we had to start going into town and washing our clothes at the laundromat.” The Rogers Road community, located in the middle of Chapel Hill and Carrboro town lines, housed the Orange County landfill for over 40 years before its closure in 2013. However, Campbell said no protections were put in place for the drinking water, as the community was not connected to the municipal water system and used wells. According to the Rogers Road community website, Howard Lee, the mayor of Chapel Hill at the time, promised paved roads, a recreation center, public transit and access to public water on Rogers Road after the temporary landfill filled up. David Caldwell, project director for RENA and a vital force in the neighborhood, said he still remembers Mayor Lee making these vows directly to his father. But Campbell said these proved to be empty promises that weren’t in the mayor’s hands, and the community continued to suffer. “In the past month alone, we’ve had five of our residents to pass away. Out of those five, four of them had cancer,” Campbell said. “We don’t know whether it was their lifestyle, the air they were breathing or the water they were drinking.” He’s not alone in believing that the contamination in the water may have caused deaths in the neighborhood. He said some residents have seen everything from coal ash to biological waste thrown into the landfill, contaminating the air and water in surrounding areas. According to the Daily Tar Heel, the UNC Gillings School of Public Health conducted a study in 2009 that revealed E.Coli bacteria and fecal contamination in the drinking water. The Orange County Health Department followed up in 2011 with tests that proved only two of the 11 wells in the neighborhood contained water that met the Environmental Protection Agency standards.