County leaders on summer break; Millhouse site survives

I realize this isn't local news, but I just wanted to throw this out there: 85 percent.

That's the estimated turnout of eligible voters in Iran's contentious presidential election. Given the uproar over the results, who knows how reliable that number is, but it gives you some perspective of the difference between American elections with large turnouts and the turnout in other parts of the world. (There wasn't much of a point here; I just was amazed at the number.)

Anyways, Orange County Commissioners held their last public meeting of the fiscal year before their summer break, meaning we have about two months to look into some of the particulars of the new budget. They left with a cliffhanger moment, approving by a 4-3 vote the continued study of the Millhouse Road site for a potential waste transfer station.

Over the summer, we can expect official environmental and engineering reports to be made of both the Millhouse site and the West 54 site. Representatives from both communities filled the meeting room last night, though those that spoke came mainly from the northern Chapel Hill (or the rural buffer) and Emerson Waldorf communities.

Residents' concerns centered around impacts of the station, which some said would be within 200 yards of the school grounds. Others were concerned the county would be placing a transfer station in a community historically linked with the Rogers Road/Eubanks community. Commissioners' pledge to reopen a stations search, after initially focusing on the current landfill site, has led them back to within two miles of where they started, and residents packed last night's meeting to ask that the county find another site.

Commissioner Mike Nelson, who voiced his discomfort with the way the search has gone before voting against further exploration of Millhouse Road (Valerie Foushee and Alice Gordon also voted against it), saying he couldn't support a site that has not been officially offered to commissioners yet.
"Where this got off track was this last-minute, 11th-hour [proposal] that may not actually be an offer," he said.
"It meant something to me that we'd be transparent. I wanted this to be different."

Now, over the two months between last night and the Aug. 18 meeting that should yield a next step (or perhaps a final site selection), residents of two communities will no doubt continue to scrutinize the two options. Both communities think historical action by the county has burdened their community more than enough. We'll have something in the paper about the meeting as well.

How do you think this will end? How should it end? We've got a few months to think about it.