Council member Gene Pease wants the Chapel Hill Town Council to get tough when it comes to improving the Rogers Road neighborhood.

Pease said at the end of the council meeting Monday that he wanted two "tough sons of bitches" on the task force that will work on a plan to bring sewer lines and a community center to the Rogers Road neighborhood, near the county landfill.

Appointing two council members to the Historic Rogers Road Task Force was the last item of business on the council's agenda Monday. Four council members were vying for two spots on the group.

Pease was not one of them, but said he wanted to make sure the people the council appointed would make sure the county doesn't make big financial decisions without input from Chapel Hill.

"Well, I want two tough sons of bitches on it," Pease said

Orange County commissioners killed a proposal Tuesday night to put new transfer station in the county and set a date to close its current landfill in 2013.

After hearing comments from about 15 people and in front of a packed meeting room, commissioners unanimously voted down a proposal by Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton to build a transfer station on the northwest corner of the Interstate 40/N.C. 86 intersection.

Chilton proposed the site earlier this year as a way to save money and keep from having to truck garbage to a Durham transfer station.

Orange County is still looking for the best short-term solution for its garbage.

And so far, there’s snags in all the possibilities.

County leaders have decided to close its landfill and possibly truck its solid waste to Durham, but Chapel Hill and Carrboro say its too expensive.

A new task force will decide how a sewer system and a new community center will be built for residents living near the county landfill.

The Orange County Board of Commissioners, Chapel Hill Town Council, Carrboro Board of Alderman and Hillsborough Board of Commissioners consented to establish the task force during a joint meeting Thursday night.

The boards met to discuss the future of the area’s solid waste and how the county will mitigate the effects of the landfill on its neighbors.

I spent a couple of hours with the folks cleaning up Rogers Road Saturday (and have the bug bites to prove it). It was a rare collaboration between the county and the historically black community which has long had to deal with the odor, vermin and water and septic problems it blames on living next to the county dump.

More than 70 volunteers turned out. They fanned out through the woods targeting more than 30 illegal dump sites. How successful were they? Very, says solid waste educator Muriel Williman.

Total trash collected (to be landilled): 2,440 lbs, just over 1 ton.

Total material diverted: (to be recycled): 3,860, just under 2 tons.

Recycling rate: 61 percent.

That's impressive, Williman says. Even more so was the spirit of the volunteers,  "I'm having fun," said 13-year-old Deja Covington of Mebane (above), deer stepping through the briars with her mom and two sisters.  "We don't usually help out like this. It feels good to pay back to the community."

Now, if I could just get the welts on my legs to stop itching ...

Look for more on the Rogers Road area cleanup in Wednesday's Chapel Hill News.    

A recent study by the Orange County Health Department and UNC student groups found 10 contaminated wells and 24 out-of-compliance septic systems in the Rogers Road neighborhood.

For some time, neighbors have been asking local governments to connect them to OWASA's water and sewer systems. There is no evidence that the Orange County Landfill is responsible for well contamination, but the community has been asking for compensation for having to live with the odor, noise and traffic for nearly 40 years.

The health department wanted to apply for federal Community Development Block Grant funding last summer but didn't have the necessary data showing well and septic failure. The recent survey will enable the department to reapply this year, according to environmental health director Tom Konsler.

"There may be a need to act sooner than this," said Konsler. "There may be some needs to put some Band-Aids on some of these systems."

Most homes along Rogers Road already have public water, but among 11 households who agreed to have their wells tested, only one met Environmental Protection Agency standards for water quality. Most exceeded EPA standards for bacteria, mineral or chemical content and two contained unsafe levels of the gasoline additive MTBE.

Septic systems were tested at the same 11 homes, plus 34 additional homes that already had public water service. Among all 45 homes, more than half had septic systems that were either malfunctioning, in need of maintenance or otherwise out of compliance with regulations. Ten needed slight modifications, nine needed maintenance, and five needed replacement.

Robert Campbell, Rogers Road's most active spokesman, will visit the White House Friday as part of a panel discussing the public health benefits of a clean energy economy. Campbell will address EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

"We're going to be there to interject our thoughts on how to go about creating green initiative programs to move us forward," he said. 

Campbell, a key leader in the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association and the Coalition to End Environmental Racism, has fought for public water to replace wells possibly contaminated by leeching from the nearby Orange County landfill. He has also fought  against siting a trash transfer station in his neighborhood.

"If we can learn truly to move into the green technology, it'll being to elminate the need for landfills," he said. 

Orange County's elected leaders agreed to form a work group next month to figure out how to expand sewer service on Rogers Road, the historically black neighborhood next to the Orange County landfill on Eubanks Road.

Neighborhood leader The Rev. Robert Campbell spoke to the Assembly of Governments Thursday night. The assembly is a periodic gathering of elected officials from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Orange County and Hillsborough.

"For 37 years we have borne the burden of your trash," Campbell said. He demanded the group develop a timeline for funding the entire cost of water and sewer connections to those homes without them as compensation for living with the noise, dust and smell of the nearby garbage dump.

In truth, elected leaders were already heading in that direction.The town of Chapel Hill's recently completed Rogers Road Task Force report recommended an intergovernmental group be formed to come up with a funding plan.

Still, Town Council member Mark Kleinschmidt, who served on the task force, said afterward that Campbell knows not to take anything for granted.    

"I think over 30 years he's learned you don't ever stop stoking the fire," Kleinschmidt said. "I respect him for doing that. I think they need to do that." 

Most of the Rogers Road area is served with water from the Orange Water and Sewer Authority. Extending sewer to the east side of the road (the west has been annexed by Carrboro) would cost an estimated $1.3 million to nearly $4.2 million.

That doesn't count individual connection costs, which the report says homeowners would have difficulty paying. 

Leaders in the Rogers Road neighborhood are giving the town of Chapel Hill 30 days to deliver a timeline for extending water and sewer to their community.

In a petition going to this Thursday's Assembly of Governments meeting, the Rev. Robert Campbell and Neloa Jones say Rogers-Eubanks residents have "endured the negative impact of nearby solid waste facilities on the community's air, land and water environment for more than 35 years."

In 2002, the Town Council agreed to create a small area plan for the neighborhood that was to look closely at providing water and sewer. But, Campbell and Jones write, the task force has met with no action by the town or coordination with other local governments.

"Is the task force to be yet another failed effort in the long history of promises made, expectations made and resolutions denied?" they ask. 

The petition does not say how the extensions would be paid for, only that Chapel Hill should work it out with Carrboro and Orange County. The petition includes a resolution from the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association and the Coalition to End Environmental Racism that the groups ask the Town Council to adopt immediately.

Thursday's meeting begins at 7 p.m. at Extraordinary Ventures, located at 200 S. Elliott Road across from Whole Foods. Read the entire petition here.  

It appears the federal government is investigating a housing discrimination complaint in Orange County.

The complaint was filed by Robert Campbell, a Rogers Road-area resident and outspoken opponent of the county's solid waste operations at the nearby landfill. The complaint was filed against the County and Town of Chapel Hill.

A letter about the complaint was in the publicly available correspondence of County Manager Laura Blackmon. It's dated June 17, and says only that the Department of Housing and Urban Development hasn't completed its investigation within 100 days of the filing of the complaint.

There are a series of checkboxes for various reasons, and there's an 'x' next to "conduct more investigation because the information gathered so far shows a need for more investigation and analysis."

The letter also says the investigation should be finished in December, but it doesn't spell out what HUD is investigating. 

Campbell and other area residents have also filed a complaint about the county's solid waste operations with the Environmental Protection Agency.