Greensboro scraps proposal to use White Street Landfill for park cleanup
GREENSBORO — City leaders are no longer considering using a local landfill to dispose of contaminated dirt from the city's Bingham Park.
Greensboro Parks and Recreation Director Phil Fleischmann said Thursday that city staff will present other options at a special Greensboro City Council meeting scheduled for Tuesday.
Fleischmann and other staff are hoping they will receive guidance on how to move forward on one of the most contentious questions facing city leaders: How will the city clean up the mess it made decades ago at Bingham Park?
Bingham Park, located of South English Street in east Greensboro, was built in the 1970s on top of a site that served as an unregulated landfill between the 1920s and 1950s.
The previous use of the property left the soil contaminated with heavy metals such as lead and arsenic. The park is currently closed.
In recent years, community members and city leaders have been working together on a way to remediate the site.
The White Street Landfill emerged as preferred option for the city for transporting the more than 11,000 truck loads of waste required for the job.
However, that proposal faced sharp backlash from community members who were concerned about potential health effects. Many also said they felt the proposal to use White Street unfairly pitted one predominantly Black community against another.
Fleischmann said that feedback is the primary reason the staff is now excluding White Street as an option.
"There were significant concerns that were relayed and really, essentially lots of very significant concerns and feelings related to the concern of reopening the White Street Landfill for this project-specific waste," Fleischmann said.
The city council would have had to amend the permit for the landfill in order to accept the volume of waste from Bingham Park.
While city leaders assured residents the changes would be tailored specifically to the park waste, many people were concerned about any changes given the landfill's history.
The landfill, which is now used exclusively for construction and demolition debris, was closed and has been kept closed to household waste as a result of activism by many community residents, including some members of the city council. The prospect of altering the permit terms encountered opposition from several people in the community.
Fleischmann also said the city had received updated cost estimates which showed the White Street Landfill and the two other potential disposal sites, the Great Oak Landfill near Asheboro and Uwharrie Landfill near Troy, were much closer in cost than originally believed.
The cost was one of the major reasons why city staff favored White Street. Cost estimates presented in the spring put the expense of disposing at White Street between $24 and $27 million. This was well below the $36 million and $54 million cost estimates for Great Oak and Uwharrie, respectively.
With the new estimates, the project cost of using White Street is $37.4 million, compared to $41.3 million for Great Oak and $43.4 million for Uwharrie.
One of the options city staff leaders will present to council members at Tuesday's meeting will involve full remediation with Great Oak and Uwharrie as the potential disposal sites.
Both community members and the Parks and Recreation Commission have voiced support for full remediation at the site.
A second option will be presented as well: a plan to contain and cover the waste at its current site, a project that would cost an estimated $12.4 million.
The city has been able to secure some funding for the project, up to $12.1 million from the state and federal governments that could be used for the cleanup.
The city is also eyeing additional funds from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality which could be used for the project.
It is unclear at this point whether or to what extent city leaders will commit local funds to the effort.
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