Chapel Hill Surveying Options for Coal Ash Remediation

The Chapel Hill Town Council voted earlier this month to explore its eligibility for a Brownfields Agreement in regard to the coal ash deposit site at 828 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

A Brownfields Agreement is a remediation plan that would define activities needed to make the site suitable for reuse.

It will be several months until the town finds out if it qualifies, and Mayor Pam Hemminger says it is unclear whether the town would accept a Brownfields Agreement if it was declared eligible.

“We want to see if we qualify because it helps us in our deciding factors,” says Hemminger. “We also set up a series of meetings coming forward with the public for advisory boards to continue asking these questions, because we are going to have to make a decision at some point.”

The primary concern surrounding the deposit is its proximity to Bolin Creek. Hemminger says the some of the options to deal with the deposit are capping the site to contain the coal ash or removing it from the property and putting it in a landfill.

The site is also the current home of the Chapel Hill Police Department, which has fallen into disrepair. Discussions surrounding the possibility of relocating the police station to a new Municipal Services Building have been going on for since the idea was floated in January 2017, and Hemminger says it is unclear whether this issue will affect that conversation.

“We are still in the midst of discussions with redeveloping a new municipal services that would include the police department over on Estes Drive, which is university property,” says Hemminger. “We are still in the design phase and still working toward that goal.”

Once the coal ash deposit is dealt with, Hemminger says the site would be ideal for redevelopment, possibly affordable housing.

The town has dedicated webpages for the coal ash remediation progress and considering the future of the property.