A Brief History of Chapel Hill’s Coal Ash Pile
- 1950’s – 70’s: The present police station site was used as a borrow pit, and a fill site for coal ash, most likely from the UNC Power Plant.
- 1980’s: Town acquires property and constructs the police station which continues to house police operations today
- 2012: Chapel Hill announces possible sale of Police Station property.
- 2013: Friends of Bolin Creek (FOBC) brought attention to the hazards of the coal ash dump buried on the Police Station site in a petition to the Town, requesting a cleanup of the site.
- 2014: A consultant hired by the Town to put in monitoring wells found contaminated ground water with heavy metals. Further studies revealed many feet of coal ash buried on the site interspersed with construction debris.
- 2017: The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) joined with FOBC to request the Town hire a consultant, Duncklee & Dunham, to perform a risk assessment to measure the relative risk posed by leaving the ash in place versus cleanup.
- 2017: The North Carolina NCDEQ instructs the Town of Chapel Hill to develop and implement a remedial action plan to evaluate multiple remedial options.
- 2018: SELC and FOBC raised the alarm during the Bolin Creek greenway reconstruction. Upon examination, the Town found extensive amounts of ash at the bottom of the bank around the greenway next to Bolin Creek. The Town removed 1000 tons of coal ash to a lined industrial solid waste landfill in Mount Gilead, NC.
- 2019: Preliminary risk evaluation findings were presented on May 24, 2019.
- 2021: Town staff leadership for this project transferred from the Sustainability to the Economic Development Department. Final risk assessment report presented to the Council in the Fall of 2021.
