When you have a perfectly nice municipal waste landfill, one thing you don’t want is a public road running right through the middle of it – and that’s the situation that High Point is now remedying at the Kersey Valley Landfill. To that end, the city is closing Kersey Valley Road between Cashatt Road and Kivett Drive and rerouting traffic around that landfill in eastern High Point.
In addition to providing a more scenic route for drivers, closing the mile long section of Kersey Valley Road will greatly expand the capacity of the landfill that’s now split into two sections on either side of the road.
High Point is now working with the NC Department of Transportation to reroute that section of Kersey Valley Road by building a new road that goes around, rather than through, the landfill.
On Monday, Oct. 14, the city held a public information session at the landfill’s main administrative building to discuss the road closure with residents and to get their input on the project – which will leave some of them living on a dead end street no longer called Kersey Valley Road.
Robby Stone, the assistant public services director for the City of High Point, said that, for the people who live on what will become an orphaned stretch of roadway, one of the primary concerns expressed at the information session was what their new addresses will be. The new road will take the Kersey Valley Road name, so they’ll no longer live on a road of that name.
“The main question they had is, on that short section, what will the new road name be?” Stone said.
He said several residents at the meeting had an idea of what name they’d like to see.
“They said, instead of the address being 123 Kersey Valley Road, can it be 123 Old Kersey Valley Road?”
Stone said city staff working on the project liked that idea very much.
That name is unquestionably better than something like Old Municipal Landfill Road or Waste Dump Way.
According to Stone, this is a very unique project because the City of High Point is funding it but the new road will be maintained by the state’s Department of Transportation, so there will be a comprehensive review process by that department. Assuming no major glitches come up in the review, Stone said, the actual roadwork is likely to begin next summer.
The closure of this existing section – about a mile of the northern section of Kersey Valley Road – will allow for a greater capacity of the landfill. Kersey Valley Landfill without the closure would provide capacity until about 2025. This consolidation effort is expected to create an additional decade or so of landfill capacity, until about 2035.
Years ago, High Point initiated a feasibility study to investigate various alternative road routes that would maintain connectivity for drivers on Kersey Valley Road.
Stone said that, as part of the process, it’s really important to hear what area residents have to say and listen to any suggestions they have.
“Citizen input is very important to us as we continue designing this project,” he said.
