Citizen Will

Category: environment

  • Trash Talk: Waste Not Methane, Want Not Energy – Additional SWAB Conversations

    To try to get the conversation caught up to date (and put the notes in a format Google, Yahoo, etc. will index), I’m republishing the further conversations the Orange County Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB) has had on land fill gas utilization. Current membership (as of January 2007) and contact list for the SWAB includes: […]

  • Trash Talk: Waste Not Methane, Want Not Energy, A Few Examples

    I quoted in my post Trash Talk: 1 Megawatt of Waste Not Methane, Want Not Energy… a February, 2006 GeoTimes report titled Recovering Landfill Gas for Energy. Two of the authors, Amarjit Riat and Wayne Blake-Hedges work just North of us at Virginia’s Fairfax County I-95 landfill complex [MAP & INFO]: Riat, a professional engineer, […]

  • Trash Talk: 1 Megawatt of Waste Not Methane, Want Not Energy, April’s SWAB Report Reveals Opportunity

    To flesh out my earlier post “Trash Talk: Waste Not Methane, Want Not Energy” here’s a few comments from the April 6th, 2006 Orange County Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB). There’s a few inline comments demarcated by [CitizenWill:…]. Landfill Gas Preliminary Report (discussed after item 1) Tipton [BJ Tipton – member ] states that other […]

  • Trash Talk: Systematic is the New Watchword

    The commissioners asked county staff to do a more exhaustive search of sites, citing solid waste management director Gayle Wilson’s statement that the process of looking for a transfer station site hadn’t been as “systematic” as previous searches for landfill space. From today’s N&O report on last night’s (Mar. 13th) BOCC meeting. After reviewing the […]

  • Trash Talk: Waste Not Methane, Want Not Energy

    One of the “planks” I ran on for Town Council involved inculcating a conservationist ethic within our local government. Besides practicing energy efficiency (Leather Seated SUVs), I suggested we could start using both energy recovery and decentralized energy production technologies to help make our Town’s operations more sustainable and economical. One such technology is methane […]

  • Trash Talk: Do you have a Minute? How about 17 years worth?

    I appreciate folks dropping by and sampling my blather. While I write CitizenWill from a Will-perspective, I also try to be somewhat objective in my analysis. Not just say, for instance, that Greenbridge is too tall but to actually measure and model its footprint in GoogleEarth. I also like to link to my source materials […]

  • Trash Talk: If not Eubanks, where?

    Given the anticipated growth patterns in Orange County, siting the transfer station near a high capacity transit corridor would seem to be best. The BOCC has two additional sites located at just such a location – the Eno Economic Development District [EEDD] (as I noted in Orange County’s Garbage Center of Gravity). The EEDD is […]

  • Trash Talk: Aarne Vesilind’s History

    I mentioned this before, but on the cusp of tonight’s meeting I’d like to remind folks of Aarne Vesilind excellent overview in the Chapel Hill News (Feb. 21, 2007) of some of the history of the Eubanks landfill. Before the early 1970s, Chapel Hill was using a small landfill owned by the university for the […]

  • Trash Talk: Promises Unmet

    [UPDATE:] Dan Coleman posted this nice summary over on OrangePolitics of the ’97 minutes: Thanks, Mark. Your four points are absolutely correct. As well as reviewing the 1997 agreements, the Commissioner’s ought to take a close look at the landfill neighbors’ current “Hope List”: 1) Cover open bed trucks going to landfill (agreed to in […]

  • Trash Talk: The Ticking Clock

    For a problem 35 years in the making, the push to finalize the site of the transfer station seems precipitous. To echo Mark Chilton’s letter, until a county-wide assessment is made, setting a timetable now is not prudent. Here’s the draft timetable from tonight’s agenda item: It would be nice to see a concurrent push […]

  • Trash Talk: Mayor Chilton’s Letter

    I’ve got a slew of garbage transfer station posts that have been piling up in anticipation of tonight’s (Mar. 13th’s) Orange County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting [ agenda ] and agenda item [PDF]. To lead off, here’s one of the newer developments, a letter from Carrboro’s Mayor Mark Chilton speaking not from his […]

  • 2035 Orange County’s Garbage Center of Gravity?

    I was struck by a conjunction between the following image from the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization 2035 Long Range Transportation Plan Socio-Economic projections I mentioned earlier and the debate currently raging over siting a trash transfer station on Eubanks Road. 35 years ago the Orange County landfill currently blighting the Rogers Road community was […]

  • Parking Downtown: Water, Water Everywhere, Nary a Drop to Drink

    I served on Chapel Hill’s Downtown Parking Taskforce, which wrapped up its business two weeks ago and which will be presenting its findings formally on Feb. 26th [AGENDA]. I meant to comment more frequently on our work but circumstances and some cautionary notes from staff intervened. It’s an interesting issue – how much of the […]

  • Rogers Road, Trashed Again? Carrboro Board of Alderman Weigh In

    [UPDATE II:] Excellent write-up covering the history of the landfill by Aarne Vesilind in today’s Chapel Hill News. [UPDATE:] It appears some of the videos have synch issues introduced by the youTube post processor. They’re watchable. I’ll be reloading them once I’ve identified the problem. I was planning to speak at the Feb. 20th, 2007 […]

  • University Station: “Absurd” and “Absolutely Ridiculous”

    The University Station project – a development hugging the South-side of I-40 on Chapel Hill’s North perimeter – is up for review tonight (Feb. 19th). Local resident John Doyle called Townhall to comment that the proposal was “absurd”, “absolutely ridiculous” and emphasizes that he’ll “make sure” any Council members approving the plan will not serve […]