By Carol Pelosi, editor
Every civilization has faced the same question: What to do with the fish and animal bones, broken crockery, wornout, broken or otherwise unusable things or pieces of things? For centuries those things got tossed onto a heap outside the back door, leading to what are now called “middens” by archeologists who determine all sorts of facts about our ancestors by what they threw away.
We have a sort of infant midden in Wake Forest – the former town landfill up on North White Street – 40 acres which are now described by Jeanette Johnson, the town’s sustainability coordinator, as “sort of serene” and “peaceful and quiet,” somewhere where public works staff and others like to go.
There is no way to determine when the Town of Wake Forest decided it had a duty to provide for the health of its residents by collecting the trash. It was probably somewhere in the transition from horses, mules and oxen to cars and trucks and when there were more people in town.
Whenever it was, in the 1920s or 1940s which I think is more probable, or even in the 1960s, whoever was in charge disposed of the heap of collected trash by burning it. And we have documentation that Guy G. Hill, who was in charge of the town’s water, sewer and electrical systems, streets and trash collection, was given permission by the town commissioners in 1970 to continue to burn the trash. We do not have any idea where he did it.
I have a vague memory also that the town had a dump because I remember writing an article and talking with a man who lived on the part of North White Street outside the town limits then who found all sorts of interesting things in or on the dump. Does anyone remember that?
The burning or the dump changed in 1972 when the town received a permit to bury its trash. Was that because the state government forced it to do so? Perhaps. The Environmental Protection Agency was formed in 1970 under President Richard Nixon and we began hearing about Earth Day and serious pollution in our rivers, ground and air.
North Carolina did not get serious about landfills in the 1970s, but by 1983 it had the first of its regulations about how landfills are constructed, which came after the four-year fight by Warren County residents against a landfill the State of North Carolina and the new Environmental Protection Agency wanted to build there because its residents were “few, black and poor.”
Remember PCBs? Remember how in 1978 crews from Ward Transformer Company began dumping those hazardous chemicals along the dirt shoulders of North Carolina roads? When they were finished they had dumped about 31,000 gallons of transformer oil that contaminated 60,000 tons of earth along 240 state highways in 14 counties.
The town of Love Canal in New York State had just made headlines because its residents were falling ill with horrible cancers because of the dangerous chemicals that had been dumped on and under its land. The EPA was designated to clean up the mess, several companies were being fined and the Ward brothers did not want to be forced to spend money to dispose of the transformer oil safely.
The final solution to the whole transformer oil mess in Warren County was to build a landfill with the most rigorous standards against polluting the surrounding earth and air with constant monitoring. That meant that people were looking seriously at landfills and began trying to make them safe for people. But Wake Forest’s landfill had begun back in 1972.
What the town did at that time was to buy the 40 acres – probably a part of the former Flaherty family farm that gave its name to the park and community center the town built later. They hired a man, bought a bulldozer and began digging trenches that began filling with trash. The trash was compacted frequently, maybe every day, but it was not lined or contained in any way except dirt, as far as I know. I do know that in the 15 years I worked at The Wake Weekly there were constant complaints that the trenches were filling so rapidly. Maybe that was because the town was growing – 2,664 people in 1960, 3,148 in 1970 and 3,780 in 1980.
I do know the town had a three-person crew working on backyard pickup weekly because we had that after Wake Forest annexed Forestville and what was then U.S. 1-A (now South Main Street) all the way to U.S. 1/Capital Boulevard. One man (white, I think) drove the truck while two men (black) wrestled whatever we kept our trash in out to the street, emptied them and then returned them to the back yard.
The town of course now has a contract with Republic to pick up the trash and recycling and it all goes to unseen destinations. And I cannot tell you what year the town ended backyard pickup and went to curbside with a contracted company, but it closed its landfill in 1993 so it was probably that year.
Since 1993 the old landfill has remained pretty much undisturbed except for the Wake Forest Police Department firing range. Beside the 40 acres, there are buffer zones of town-owned land around the landfill site, which is all underground.
Currently and for some time before now, Johnson has been working with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to close the site, referred to as the Risk-Based Closure of the North White Street Landfill. The monitoring the town has been doing since 1993 has been periodic sampling of the three wells near the landfill and testing the samples for indications of leaching or something else which could provide a risk to human health. Nothing has been found thus far.
“The NCDEQ has permitted the Town to forego recent water quality monitoring. However, we check in with NCDEQ at our normal monitoring times to ensure we are satisfying their requirements,” Johnson said in an email.
“The proposed Remedial Action Plan for the Risk-Based Closure has been approved. We are waiting for the parcel to be surveyed with the Land Use Restriction Requirements from the NCDEQ. Once that happens, we will update the parcel information with the Town and Wake County. After that, we expect to close the wells on the property.”
The firing range was accepted as one of the conditions for the closure.
“As we have from the beginning, we will continue to seek and receive NCDEQ guidance until we complete this process,” Johnson concluded.
Now we can wait for the landfill to achieve midden status.
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Burgers, cops raise $$$ for Special Olympics
The Wake Forest Police Department and Burger King are joining forces in April to raise awareness and funds for Special Olympics North Carolina.
As part of the “Your Way for Inclusion” campaign, Wake Forest Police officers will be onsite at both Wake Forest Burger King locations on April 22 selling Special Olympics North Carolina Torch Run T-shirts and collecting donations to support the Law Enforcement Torch Run for Special Olympics. The hours for the officers to be at the location at 12301 Capital Boulevard and at 923 Gateway Commons Circle have not been announced.
In addition, both Burger King locations will affix QR code stickers to their bags throughout April which patrons can scan to make online donations directly to SONC. The QR codes will also be posted inside the restaurants.
The WFPD is now accepting SONC donations year-round at https://bit.ly/WFPDSpecialOlympics. All funds raised will go to SONC as part of The Law Enforcement Torch Run. For more information, contact Officer R. Wilkinson at 919-608-8472 or rwilkinson@wakeforestnc.gov or Cpl. J. McArthur at 919-554-6150 or jmcarthur@wakeforestnc.gov.
SONC is one of the largest Special Olympics programs in the world with nearly 40,000 registered athletes who train and compete in year-round programs in 20 different sports. The mission of Special Olympics is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy, and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills, and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes, and the community.
The Law Enforcement Torch Run® (LETR) for Special Olympics is the largest year-round public awareness and grass-roots fundraising campaign for Special Olympics. Known as Guardians of the Flame, law enforcement members and Special Olympics athletes carry the Flame of Hope into the Opening Ceremony of local competitions, and into Special Olympics State, National, Regional, and World Games. Annually, more than 110,000 dedicated and compassionate law enforcement members carry the “Flame of Hope,” symbolizing courage and the celebration of diversity, uniting communities around the globe. In North Carolina, nearly 2,000 law enforcement personnel support the NC LETR annually.
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