Michelle Laws, president of the local chapter of the NAACP, told county commissioners that a plan to site a waste transfer station near the current landfill is unacceptable.

The board is currently considering sites on Millhouse Road and Highway 54, as well as a plan to ship trash to Durham. Residents of the Rogers, Eubanks and Millhouse Road neighborhoods say that to put the waste transfer station nearby would add to the burden they’ve shouldered by living next to the county’s landfill for more than three decades.

Residents allege that seepage from the landfill has tainted area wells. A recent study by students at the UNC School of Public Health identified groundwater contamination in the drinking water of half of the homes surveyed.

The study did not draw a link between the water problems and the proximity of the landfill, but it’s a connection Rogers Road Eubanks Neighborhood Association President Robert Campbell says is obvious.

Tuesday, county commissioners agreed to fund testing of 36 residential wells in the area and provide replacement for failing wells within 3,000 feet of the landfill. Staff at the Orange County Health Department estimate the study will be completed by February of next year. County Commissioners are set to decide the waste transfer station issue on December 7th.