City seeks solution on dump site
Havelock commissioners vowed to seek legislative support for a cleanup of the Phoenix dump site near Tucker Creek during their meeting on Monday night.
“The next move is to keep it on the front burner,” said Dave Harvell, assistant city manager.
The 34-acre landfill is full of debris of various origins, but primarily waste gathered in other counties in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd in 1999, according to city officials.
“If we don’t keep it on the front burner, nobody is going to put it on the front burner,” Mayor Jimmy Sanders said.
Sanders said the area’s legislative delegation needed to visit the closed dump to see with their own eyes the heaps of refuse that is being stored there.
“I think they need to see it for exactly what it is,” Sanders said. “Nobody else wants to get involved because nobody else wants to take financial responsibility.”
Sanders said the cost of cleanup was estimated about $2 million.
Debate has swirled over exactly what entity is responsible for the landfill since the state closed it in 2000. The companies operating the site, Sand Inc. and Phoenix Recycling Inc., eventually dissolved, and the state filed a lawsuit in 2003 for cleanup costs. A judge ruled in 2007 that the Coastal Regional Solid Waste Management Authority, which had contracted with Phoenix, was not responsible for the site.
Allen Hardison, head of the authority, said in an interview on Tuesday that it has no stake in the dump whatsoever.
“We never owned it and never operated it,” he said. “We just had a contract to take demolition debris and recycle it.”
Despite all the legal maneuvers, decisions and rulings in the last 10 years, the dump, located behind Wells Wayside furniture and next to Tucker Creek Middle School, remains, and the responsibility of cleanup has never been settled.
“Here’s a problem that’s been here for 20 years,” Sanders said of the construction landfill that opened in 1993. “North Carolina certainly has some responsibility. It was after Hurricane Floyd that the state of North Carolina allowed anything and everything in there. The way the county dealt with it was to put up a berm around it so people couldn’t see it. We need to tell our story.”
One of the city’s concerns is the monitoring for potentially hazardous materials that may be leaching into the ground from the debris that includes metal, plastic and treated wood.
“No one is monitoring the monitoring wells,” Harvell said.
A 2005 assessment showed that there was no evidence of contamination from hazardous waste.
A proposal has been made to make the site a city park for children in the Tucker Creek and MacDonald Downs neighborhoods and to construct a road that would link the two neighborhoods and increase connectivity in the western part of the city behind the newly built West End Fire Station.
Commissioner George Liner said that the city needed to get the public interested and involved with an issue that is literally in its backyard.
Commissioner Danny Walsh said that the property ties in with the city’s land-use program.
Liner said that the foremost concern, though, is that the site is a safety issue.
Commissioners agreed to have a point paper created and sent with a cover letter to the local members of the General Assembly.
In other actions Monday night, the board:
• approved a bid from T.A. Loving for $291,235 to construct a new waterline from Cunningham Drive to Belltown Road. The main line is part of the city’s plan to re-support water supply infrastructure leading to the western parts of the city.
• approved use of about $110,000 for other water system improvement options.
• heard from engineer Tom Tant, of Hazen and Sawyer, that the effort to place a wastewater discharge pipe across Cherry Point to the Neuse River was within about 90 days of a public comment period. The USDA is partially financing the $10 million project that will ultimately enlarge the city’s sewer capacity.
