The Greensboro City Council is postponing a special meeting that had been scheduled for Tuesday, July 23 regarding the Bingham Park remediation project. A new date for the meeting hasn’t been set yet.
Here was the reason for the postponement given in a press release: “City Council in consultation with City staff would like to continue its due diligence of exploring additional precautionary measures to ensure optimum safety as it relates to the potential remediation and disposal process. As such, new potential additional safety measures have been presented, which will need to be further evaluated.”
According to city officials, postponing the special meeting will also allow the City Council members more time to explore all the available options for remediation and disposal of the soil at Bingham Park.
The park, which was contaminated with dangerous metals in the early part of last century, was opened in the 1970s. It operated as a park for decades; however, it’s now closed for all uses due to the discovery of, and the extent of, the problem.
City leaders have been trying to promote the idea of disposing of the soil at White Street Landfill – and the city has even been holding a series of tours of the landfill for residents. The tours were meant to show how safely and securely the contaminated soil from Bingham Park can be disposed of at the White Street Landfill.
The fact that the public discussion on the Bingham Park issue has been postponed could suggest that city officials are seeing a good degree of pushback on reopening the White Street Landfill for that purpose. There certainly have been a lot of residents in the area who aren’t pleased with the idea.
The City Council and city staff have discussed other options but some have pointed out that those other options are much more expensive than using White Street.
To explore the possibilities, the City’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience researched every landfill within 75 miles of Bingham Park.
To be “appropriate” for this project, the landfill has to:
- Be willing to accept municipal solid waste from Greensboro
- Have the capacity to take in an anticipated 11,400 truckloads of waste or perhaps more
- Be a state-regulated, lined landfill.
Those criteria, along with other factors – such as permitting and the logistics of the transportation and disposal of the waste – caused city leaders to land on three viable options:
- White Street Landfill in Greensboro
- Great Oak Landfill in Asheboro
- Uwharrie Landfill in Troy
One Rhino Times reader offered another option in the comments on a previous story related to the park remediation: “Makes sense to designate the area a no-go area with fencing and leave it to nature to do what nature does, provide life-giving greenery to the area. Nature is wonderful and not a drain on taxpayers. Could add a sign like ‘Nature at work, leave her be.’”
City officials have said that the White Street landfill option “offers guaranteed availability, meets federal and state health and environmental rules, would allow for the quickest cleanup, would provide a $10 million cost savings over the next available cleanup option, and would help permanently close the landfill an estimated eight years earlier.”
I assume ignoring the area would lead to continued leaching into ground water supplies. Just a reminder that this is what a world looks like without regulations.
I ,like many of us who grew up in that area, played in that park and in that creek, who went to Hampton Elementary School and attended Mt.Zion Baptist Church when it was at Spencer and Bingham Streets are now wondering what effects that landfill has had on our health and safety all these years after we have gotten older. Has anyone been able to obtain information that will answer those questions?? As the other gentleman said” this is what happens without adequate regulations in place.
Returning the land to nature is not ignoring the area. As I understand, there are additives that can be put on/in the soil that will help decontaminate the soil. Once that process is completed, leave the area to nature. If necessary, plant trees to give nature a head start. The trees can be planted by P&R employees. Some trees will leach certain chemicals from the soil. It seems to me that removing the soil is not fixing the problem but moving the problem to a new location. As far as the water supply is concerned, the city has a very effective water testing and treatment facility. Have any contaminates from the site been found in the water supply? I do not believe there are any wells in the city. Doesn’t the city get water from three lakes located nowhere near the contaminated site? Who wouldn’t love to have acres and acres of beautiful nature surrounding their homes? Nature is a serious cleanup machine.
The city does not want to think or hurt the votes they may lose. They’ll just spend your tax dollars or dump the issue elsewhere. That’s how they work.
Possible solution in the not so distant future? The research group is looking for a field testing site for the new and promising technology.
“Electrothermal mineralization process offers more environmentally friendly, cost-effective method for soil remediation”
https://phys.org/news/2024-07-electrothermal-mineralization-environmentally-friendly-effective.html
The land belongs to the city and if the city allows such remediation, the company that is doing the field testing should do the testing for free. I’ll scratch your back, if you will scratch mine.