Staff writer Stan Chambers reports the Orange County Board of Commisioners just voted 6-1 to send the county's trash to Durham.

The Orange landfill is scheduled to fill up by 2012. The county had to choose between two sites for a transfer station, a warehouse where garbage is collected and loaded onto larger truck for hauling to a distance landfill, or to send the trash to Durham. The Bull City already has a transfer station and has been looking for a possible partner to aid in its expansion.

Commissioner Steve Yuhasz cast tonight's dissenting vote.

This story broke too late for Wednesday's Chapel Hill News. Look for Stan's story in The News & Observer on Tuesday.      

A UNC property law expert says covenants restricting a Millhouse Road property to residential uses only does not stop the county from putting a solid waste transfer station there.

Chuck Szypszak, a professor in the School of Government, says case law allows governments to bypass deed restrictions in a process similar to eminent domain, or the taking of private land for a public purpose.

“Basically the government can do whatever it wants with land,” Szypszak said Friday.

The Orange County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to decide Monday night whether to pick one of two sites for a transfer station or send trash to Durham’s transfer station for disposal in a landfill.

“The choices are between three all fairly unpalatable choices,” Commissioner Steve Yuhasz said.

The Orange County landfill on Eubanks Road is scheduled to fill up by 2012. After deciding not to build another landfill, the county has spent two years and hundred of thousands of dollars trying to figure out where to put the county’s waste.

We'll have more on this in Sunday's Chapel Hill News.

Orange County Attorney John Roberts says he disagrees with fellow attorney Mark Dorosin's reading of protective covenants that would restrict development of a county-owned 10 acres on Millhouse Road to residential development.

As we reported in today's News & Observer, Dorosin, of the UNC Center for Civil Rights, argues that restrictions placed on the parcel in the 1970s bar commercial development or any other use neighbors would consider a nuisance. That would presumably include a solid waste transfer station, with its dozen or more trucks a day delivering garbage for reloading onto larger trucks heading to a distant landfill. 

"The county has the power to condemn property for a public purpose," said County Attorney Roberts, who concedes he is not a property lawyer. "I'm comfortable that the law will allow us to terminate the protective covenants for that purpose."

What next? If the county comissioners do pick Millhouse Road Monday night, Dorosin said the matter could be headed to court.  

Orange County is reviewing whether rules placed on a Millhouse Road property 30 years ago prevent the county from placing a solid waste transfer station there.

Mark Dorosin, senior managing attorney with the UNC-Chapel Hill-based Center for Civil Rights, has been working with the historically black Rogers Road community to oppose a possible transfer station on Millhouse Road just north of Chapel Hill. Community leaders consider the Paydarfar property part of their neighborhod.

On Wednesday Dorosin notified the county that covenants placed on the 10-acre property in 1979 restrict its use to “residential purposes only.”

The restriction, repeated in later deeds, appears to revise an even earlier restriction contained in two 1974 deeds that said  “There shall be no commercial uses or any lawful use of said property which wil constitute a public or private nuisance.”

Dorosin said there is a time limit on such covenants but that state law makes exceptions, including for provisions that limit land to residential use.

“Siting of the transfer station on the Paydarfar property deliberately iogores the clear intent and vision of the Blackwoods and all of the propety owners who bought land throughout the area,” Dorosin wrote in his letter.

The Orange County landfill is scheduled to fill up in 2012. On Monday, the Board of County Commissioners is scheduled to either pick one of two transfer station sites or decide to send future trash to Durham’s transfer station for trucking to a landfill outside that county.

Orange County might appease transfer station opponents by choosing the cheaper of two sites and putting the savings toward the affected neighborhood, according to a draft county document.

With the county landfill scheduled to fill up by  2012, the county commissioners are scheduled  Monday night to either pick a site for a solid waste transfer station or send future trash to Durham’s transfer station.

A transfer station is a warehouse where trucks bring trash for loading onto larger trucks headed for a distant landfill. Orange County is looking at two sites for a transfer station: a 150-acre site on N.C. 54 west of Carrboro or a smaller 10-acre site the county already owns off Millhouse Road, just north of the current landfill.

According to a draft agenda item for Monday’s meeting, if the county chooses the Millhouse Road site known as the “Paydarfar property” it would ask the Town of Chapel Hill to donate two adjacent parcels. Those parcels – 6900 Millhouse Road and 6917 Millhouse Road – have an assessed value of $561,742, according to Orange County land records.       

After years of pressure from the Chapel Hill Town Council, the Orange County commissioners acknowledge that county residents aren't paying their fair share to fund the town library that serves them. County Manager Frank Clifton suggested a potential doubling of the county's contribution toward operating expenses, which would tally about $500,000, approximately 22 percent of the library's annual cost. Clifton will work with Town staff to bring back a specific proposal by the end of January, but it's not likely to include a county capital contribution to the town's $16 million library expansion plan.

"We just don't have that flexibility," Commissioner Mike Nelson told the Assembly of Governments, which brought together elected officials from Chapel Hill, Carrboro and the county tonight. "I don't want anybody to leave the room with false hope."

About 40 percent of registered patrons at the Chapel Hill Public Library live in Carrboro or other parts of Orange County outside Chapel Hill. 

"This is just more of the same," said Town Council member Jim Ward. "It has been the same discussion for the better part of two decades."

His colleague Matt Czajkowski said the town may need to start charging non-Chapel Hill residents $100 a year in order to offset the costs of serving them. 

"That's the decision we're going to have to make if we're going to decide to go forward with the expansion this spring," he said. 

Dr. Neil Pedersen, superintendent of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools, is in the running for a state education leadership award.

The Public School Forum, an education policy group, said Friday that Pedersen is one of three finalists for the annual Jay Robinson Leadership Award.

The award is given to those who have made outstanding contributions to education. It is named after the late Jay Robinson, who served as superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, as a vice president of the UNC system, and as chairman of the state Board of Education.

The recipient of the award will be announced on June 8th. The other finalists are Dr. Dudley Flood, an education consultant, and Dr. Shirley Prince, superintendent of the Scotland County schools.

On Saturday, March 21st, University Lake and the Cane Creek Reservoir
in Orange County reopened for boating, fishing, picnicking, sunbathing
and other recreation. Both lakes are full due to winter rains. The
lakes are operated by Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA).

Valerie Foushee, chairwoman of the Orange County Board of Commissioners, responded to our transfer station question (about whether the county might revisit the Eubanks Road landfill as a possible site.)

"At present, the county has not changed its course of action regarding the siting of the transfer station," she writes. "That is not to say that during the course of budget discussions for FY 2009-10, the costs for the siting, construction, and the cost of transporting solid waste out of the county will not lead to a revisiting of sites that were previously ruled out."

About 50 residents attended a meeting with solid waste director Gayle Wilson Sunday night in White Cross. Read a report on the meeting in tomorrow's Chapel Hill News.

Fifty people attended last night's solid waste transfer station meeting in White Cross. Five times as many crammed the Recreation Center for airport meetings. But it was cold and rainy, and there was basketball.

Several residents asked why the county was choosing to haul its future trash, a less sustainable practice than building a new landfill. They also asked why, if a transfer station is being pursued, the county is looking far from where the trash is generated, again less sustainable (in terms of energy costs).

The answer in both cases, solid waste director Gayle Wilson said, is politics. The county was unable to find a landfill site in the 1990s and decided not to put a transfer station on Eubanks Road -- land it owns close to where most of the trash is generated -- because it would have saddled the Rogers Road community with decades of more garbage.

"Been there, done that," Wilson said. "You can definitely make the argument it's not sustainable to haul your waste to another county and another state. But we tried the sustainable approach, and here we are."

So we asked some of the commissioners today whether, in light of the economy especially, they wanted to reconsider Eubanks Road.

COMMISSIONER MIKE NELSON: "I believe the Board's intent was clear, not to reconsider the Eubanks Road site."

COMMISSIONER BERNADETTE PELISSIER: "I know that folks do keep bringing up Eubanks Road as a waste transfer site. But recall that two of us three new commissioners did vote for the sites on Hwy 54. We are waiting for a report on other options in response to questions raised by community members and commissioners. I can't say what we will do until we review additional information."

COMMISSIONER PAM HEMMINGER: "I am fairly confident that the Eubanks site will not be reconsidered. The BOCC has already been down that road."

You can read more about Sunday night's meeting in Wednesday's Chapel Hill News. In the meantime, what do you think the county should do with its trash? If we get enough responses (with your full name and town or township), we'll print some of them in Sunday's paper. Thanks.