By Savannah Volkoff
I am sitting in the second aisle of the Faith Tabernacle Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and an overwhelming feeling of frustration swells within me as I listen to David Caldwell, a resident of the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood, speak about the “Forty Year Struggle”. It’s been a while since I last sat inside a church, but I realize that for David and his community members this sanctuary serves every form of the word’s definition: it is a safe haven and a place of worship. Listening to the story of the war being fought, as I await the celebration of a battle won, the only place I want to be is in that church. It was injustice that brought community members together, but it was faith that kept them strong and relentless.
I am one in a group of twenty-five people who have come from Durham to visit the Rogers-Eubanks community. Five of us, including myself, work in the Superfund Center at Duke, while the other individuals are K-12 teachers, faculty and students of Johnson C. Smith University, and community members, all from Charlotte, North Carolina, who have come to Duke to participate in a three-day Environmental Justice workshop, hosted by the Superfund Center. The workshop featured topics on sustainable agriculture, pesticide use, farm labor conditions, and with the Roger-Eubanks neighborhood, environmental justice and community organizing.
The Orange County Landfill is located on Rogers Road and has been in operation since 1972, when Mayor Howard Lee of Chapel Hill promised the community improved infrastructure and community benefits, including recreational facilities, parks, street lamps, and public water access, in exchange for housing the county landfill. The landfill was established during a time of limited regulation on landfill construction and so the landfill was built, without a liner, and without restrictions limiting which materials it would accept. Therefore, the landfill has direct access to soil and groundwater and stores various types of waste, including hazardous material such as chemical waste, paint, batteries, light bulbs, mercury-containing thermometers, and automotive fluids.
Ten years later, in 1982, instead of closing down the landfill, as originally promised, the landfill was expanded to meet waste storage demands of a growing county population. Contaminated surface, ground, and well water affected the community members, some of who did not have access to public drinking water. Litter was blown off trucks barreling down streets heading to the landfill and scattered across lawns and laid along roadsides. Buzzards circled the landfill and the community, defecating on houses and destroying gardens.
As Mayor Lee’s promises to the community remained unfulfilled, neighbors began to “Organize, Strategize, and Mobilize” in an effort to bring awareness to the injustice imposed on their community. After over forty years of enduring the wrath of the landfill and the obstacles constructed by city officials of the three different county jurisdictions with influence over the Rogers-Eubanks community, David Caldwell, the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association (RENA), and the Coalition to End Environmental Racism (CEER), have won a small victory: as of Sunday, June 30, 2013, the Orange County Landfill will no longer accept household waste. We joined David Caldwell and other members of RENA on Saturday to witness the ceremony of this closure. Mrs. Nunn, now an elderly woman whose family has lived in the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood for generations, was present to symbolically put a lock on the gates of the Orange County Landfill service entrance gate.
Despite this success, the landfill will remain in operation and continue to accept tires, scrap metal, large appliances, electronics, and other hazardous wastes.
As if no lessons have been learned from the Rogers-Eubanks community struggle, just last week the North Carolina Senate approved legislation which would reduce landfill restrictions. These changes would reduce the 5 mile buffer of landfills from state/federal lands to just 1,500 feet. In addition, the current law requiring vehicles transporting solid waste to be “leak-proof” would be revised, requiring only “leak resistance”. Furthermore, the reasons for permit application rejections by state regulators have been constricted. Claiming that a landfill would have significant implications to landfill-neighboring parks, ecological systems, or cultural sites will no longer stand as a valid basis for permit rejection.
Despite the small victory gained and the battling of Rogers-Eubanks community members, the war is not over. An increasing population usually means increasing amounts of waste, which presents many problems for city planners, landfill operations, and communities. Resolving these issues will require awareness, city waste reduction and landfill diversion initiatives, individual participation in recycling and composting programs in an effort to reduce landfill loads, and the persistence of relentless opposition from communities impacted by environmental injustices coupled with support from communities fortunate enough to avoid these burdens.
