Orange County must act on landfill

In recent years, Orange County’s landfill has crept steadily closer to capacity. Soon, the county will be without a place to dump its trash. Residents of the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood, where the landfill is located, are at the end of their rope. And there is no solution in sight.

Orange County has found a quick fix in a temporary waste-storage facility in Durham. But if the county allows this temporary solution to become permanent, its budget and environment will suffer.

After years of delay, the county needs to find a permanent place for its waste — within its own boundaries.

A number of solutions have been proposed, and none are perfect. But building a new landfill in Orange County is the closest we can get.

The county cannot continue to let other communities clean up its mess. This is especially true when the health of these communities and the dollars of our taxpayers are on the line.

One suggestion was to continue increasing the capacity of the current landfill and keep depositing Orange County’s trash there.

This would be a slap in the face to the residents of the Rogers Road community, who have spent the past four decades dealing with the landfill’s byproducts.

There is little doubt that the lives of the residents in this historically low-income neighborhood would be easier if the county stopped depositing trash in their backyard. Countless activists and protesters have already said as much.

A second option is building a new landfill elsewhere in Orange County. Predictably, much like the residents of the Rogers Road area, no one wants the facility anywhere near their home.

The final option is sending trash to Durham’s landfill, which won’t be full any time in the near future. Orange County decided on this as a short-term solution in 2009.

Expanding Orange County’s landfill’s capacity would create more problems than it would solve. Creating a new landfill or waste transfer station won’t be perfect, but it’s certainly preferable to the current situation, which only delays the inevitable.

Building a transfer station could create problems for the county’s budget, with projected costs between $1.5 and $6 million.

Given these factors, it might seem like the county has no choice other than outsourcing its trash storage to the temporary facility in Durham.

But this quick-fix could be more expensive than its alternatives in the long run.

At a yearly cost of $130,000 to $140,000, this option could exceed the cost of building a new facility in as few as 10 years.

It also increases the pollution that the county is creating by requiring the trash trucks to run for longer times and greater distances, crippling the county’s sustainability initiatives in the process.

As it picks its poison, the county must make sure it does not allow a temporary (and incomplete) fix to become a permanent solution.

The intent is to use the Durham landfill for 3 to 5 years, but some, such as Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton, have expressed doubts that it will remain temporary.

The county must make good on its promise to use the landfill in Durham for as little time as possible. And in the meantime, it must search for a permanent location for a new landfill. Once the location is decided, construction should begin immediately.