By Editorial Board
April 18, 2022 | 6:56pm EDT
In an inexcusably negligent decision, the Town of Chapel Hill will soon build low-income homes on a toxic coal ash site, according to a WRAL report on the development.
This decision, inspired by the town’s desperate need for more affordable housing, represents a severe lack of care for the underserved members of our community.
By delegating toxic land to those struggling with poverty, the Town is exploiting the housing needs of these populations. This project should not go forward.
The Town has owned the 10-acre piece of land, located off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, since 1980, and the land has been dumping grounds for both residents and the University for at least 50 years. It’s no small inconvenience, either — the property is filled with more than 60,000 cubic yards of coal ash.
The plan is to cover the coal ash with 3 to 4 feet of clean soil and construct a retaining wall to prevent it from eroding into a nearby creek, partially responsible for the town’s water supply. The alternative — removing the coal ash — could cost up to $16 million and risk air pollution during removal.
The decision to bury and build on top of the pollution is a short-sighted decision by Town Council members, who all voted in favor of the project with the exception of Adam Searing. They fail to consider the long-term potential of coal ash exposure as flooding, erosion and time work against the fresh soil that would reportedly contain it.
Considering the risks that coal ash has posed in the past, building in an area with such uncertainty regarding the safety of potential residents is ill-advised.
Coal ash commonly contains arsenic, lead and mercury, among other heavy metals. Long-term exposure to these elements can put individuals at increased risk of respiratory issues, neurological disorders and cancers.
For several suburbs outside Charlotte, coal ash dumping by Duke Energy into Lake Norman has posed threats to health and drinking water.
Mooresville, a town located on the lake, has elevated rates of thyroid cancer, according to a Duke University survey on the impacts of coal ash in Iredell County. In fact, the county is a potential cancer cluster, with thyroid cancer rates that are two to three times the state average, according to the Central Cancer Registry.
Coal ash is not explicitly considered to be hazardous waste by the Environmental Protection Agency, despite debates, but could still prove to affect residents if low levels of it exist in the air. Children would be left especially vulnerable.
Why would Chapel Hill ignore scientific and local evidence of the dangers of coal ash exposure?
Don’t get us wrong, the initiative to build low-income housing in Chapel Hill is an admirable and necessary one. The percentage of people who live below the poverty line in Chapel Hill is more than 7 points higher than the national average. Even if these numbers are inflated due to the town’s student population, it demonstrates the dire need for action on behalf of the town.
Moving people to affordable housing units would be a step in the right direction, but the quality of these people’s lives would be subject to risky uncertainty. It could be reasonably predicted that health conditions would plague their experiences and may even harm them financially as health care needs worsen.
Exposing low-income communities to chemicals that could lead to illness does not come close to solving poverty — it just redefines it.
The entire situation reiterates the harms of reliance upon cheap coal and other fossil fuels that pollute the environment. The issues of pollution and environmental crises are most directly felt by the marginalized members of society, as evidenced by the local government’s push to have these communities live atop a mound of coal ash.
Chapel Hill’s willingness to propagate environmental racism and injustice is appalling. Those who are not responsible for the massive dumping of toxic waste are forced to bear the burden of the pollution.
The University needs to be held responsible for its role in this site’s accumulation of waste. The town that allowed the misuse of the land should be held accountable for its consequences, not the low-income people they hope to house there. Most importantly, the solutions for a lack of affordable housing should not be built on toxic waste.
The goal of the Town should be to mitigate the effects of poverty in the safest and most effective way possible. Delegating those in need to dangerous sites of pollution does not serve this goal and is a miscarriage of justice in our community.
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