The Greene Tract is a 164 acre tract of land purchased decades ago by the Town of Chapel Hill, Town of Carrboro, and Orange County, originally to serve as the site of a new county landfill. The three governments are currently working on a plan to develop part of the site and preserve the rest. The specifics of this plan has been hotly debated in recent months and was a key talking point during the recent Chapel Hill Town Council election. Caroline Dwyer, an urban planner who lives in Durham, has written a thorough history of the site that separates fact from fiction and places the story of the Greene Tract in its proper context. I’ve provided an excerpt from the beginning of the piece, and I encourage you to read the entire piece at Chapelboro.com.
By Caroline Dwyer
“How long shall we stand? As long as there is a need to correct an injustice.”
This week, the Towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro and Orange County will consider adopting a resolution approving a draft recombination plat (map) and conceptual plan for 164-acres jointly owned by the three parties, known as the Greene Tract. As many readers likely know, the parcel’s long and complex history has recently re-opened a political Pandora’s Box, pitting those who believe it should be preserved in perpetuity for conservation or a public park against those who believe it should be used in ways promised to the residents of the Historic Rogers Road Neighborhood. My intention is to help separate the facts from the fiction, ensuring the stated vision and wishes of Rogers Road residents are respected, recognized, and honored at a time when those wishes are at risk of being drowned out, weaponized, and distorted by those who are fomenting and spreading misinformation, fear, and mistrust in pursuit of a narrow set of self-serving interests.
FACT 1: The Greene Tract was purchased in 1984 to host a future landfill.
For those not familiar with the history, the Greene Tract’s story is inextricably linked to the Historic Rogers Road Neighborhood. To fully understand both, we must start in 1972, when a deal was brokered (and subsequently broken) to locate a new county landfill next to the Rogers Road neighborhood (notably, the option of last resort as all other neighborhoods managed to extract themselves from consideration). In exchange for bearing the long-term impacts of an 80-acre, unlined landfill, residents were promised public services and community amenities, including water, sewer, sidewalks, a recreation center, and green space. For those keeping track, the sewer hook-ups were not completed until 2020.
In 1984, the Greene Tract was jointly purchased by Orange County and the Towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro to host a future landfill, a designation formalized by the 1987 Joint Planning Agreement. One more time for emphasis – THE ORIGINAL INTENT FOR USING THE GREENE TRACT WAS TO EXPAND (the already unwanted and dangerous) LANDFILL. The Greene Tract was not purchased for conservation or preservation or to protect the environment. It was purchased to expand a landfill contiguous to an historically African-American community already suffering from negative health impacts and to whom promises of public services and amenities were not met.
FACT 2: Active planning for the (non-landfill future of the) Greene Tract has been underway since 1999.
This one is for the folks who feel like the process is moving “too fast.” In 1999, having thankfully dodged the bullet of all-of-the-Greene Tract = garbage dump scenario, 60 acres of the Tract were transferred from joint ownership to sole County ownership for undetermined “solid waste management purposes.” Per this agreement the three parties (Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Orange County) were also to make a good faith effort to determine the “ultimate use or disposition of the remainder of the Greene Tract [104 acres] as soon as possible and in any event by December 31, 2001.”
Additional plans, studies, policies, working groups, and task forces were formed and provided recommendations for the Greene Tract in 2003, 2008, 2009, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2019, and 2020. If this isn’t “death by committee,” then I don’t know what is.
It’s now 2021, and we still don’t have a final disposition for use of the Greene Tract. There are valid reasons for not liking the process but saying it’s moving “too fast” can never be one of them.