In a community on one end of Chatham County, a major development project is quickly progressing — in another, a symbol from the past is creating debate around its future.
While the county is seeing the Wolfspeed manufacturing plant outside of Siler City continue to come out of the ground, it is also grappling with lead and hexavalent chromium contamination around the land caused by a recent attempt to clean the old water tower in the Bynum community. Chair of the Chatham County Commissioners Karen Howard spoke with 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey about these stories, and more, during her on-air conversation on July 2.
Click here to listen to their full interview. The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.
Andrew Stuckey: We just had Lisa Sorg on who wrote a story about the Bynum Water Tower that they were attempting to restore. And as part of that process, it appears that some lead contamination happened to the community garden and the county had to stop the contractors from continuing that restoration. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about that, and where we are now in the process.
Karen Howard: I don’t know that I can actually add much more: it is very unfortunate because it was a good faith effort on the part of the county to work with the community to save that water tower. I think the initial inclination of the county staff was to just get rid of it, but it’s important to the community and there was a community group that was interested in preserving it and having that restoration work done. My understanding is it was not originally planned that there would be sanding [done] and I don’t know where the breakdown happened. We are still waiting for additional details on the extent of the contamination — whether there was some other contamination that happened either prior to, or simultaneously. It sounds as though there were soil samples from farther away that showed some contamination as well. And so, the county did put a stop to the work that was being done and now [we are] figuring out how to go about dealing with abatement and ensuring that the area around the water tank is safe — and that any contaminated soils are removed or addressed.
I think my biggest challenge right now is that we need to be very clear with the community that we’re sharing all of the information that we have. There’s not, you know, a secret dash of information that we are privy to that is not being [publicly] shared. On that [note], I do feel as though we could do a better job of being more communicative when things like this happen. I think there’s an inclination on staff’s part — and understandably — not to jump the gun, not to say things that were not tested and true. But from the local government perspective, we have to more balance that responsibility to share the information that we know as quickly as we know it, and then be open to hearing from the community.
And so, we’re in the midst of it right now — there’s not much I can offer in addition to what the article covered. I do think that there was a clear intention on the county part to do good, and I [think] there is still an in intention to do the right thing and to do the good work that was intended to be done around this water tower. I think the right thing to do is to hit pause, understand what contamination [means], the extent of it, the spread, and how best to contain and address it. And then [we need] to be very clear with the community about what we plan to do next.
Stuckey: Just to give folks a little bit of context, Bynum is located just north of Pittsboro, just off 15-501 on the north side of the Haw River Bridge. It’s a community that I think a lot of people don’t know very much about. It’s also a community that feels like it could have used a break — and this is a bad break. It’s a really unfortunate thing, where folks were kind of rallying around this opportunity with the water tower and then to have it turn like this…you just hate to see this happen for a community like that.
Howard: The county was working with a group from Bynum to get historic designation status. We made a contribution to their fund, brought the final $10,000 that was required. And so, there has been a good and productive relationship with Bynum and it’s a beautiful, small historic community — a mill town that is valuable to Chatham, right? There are wonderful things that happen there, that have emanated from there, there’s a strong sense of community. We certainly feel like the right thing has to be done, and there was… I don’t [know], user error, judgment errors… whatever happened needs to be addressed and the county needs to address it. We’re committed to doing that, but [it’s] definitely unfortunate.
Stuckey: I also wanted to check in here: we are so accustomed to hearing news out of the economic development from VinFast down near Moncure and then Wolfspeed in Siler City. It seems like something always comes out one way or another on one of those stories. There’s some new development or some new milestone reached or some new story broken — and then there’s kind of been silence from both of those for the last several weeks. This seems like the sort of case where maybe no news is good news, but I wanted to check in with you as the county commissioners and see what the general mood is on both of those developments.
Howard: Yeah — in this case, I think no news is good news. They’re chugging along. There’s definitely still a lot of work happening in the finishing up of Wolfspeed site. They are getting very close to the finish line, and they’ve been doing a really good job, and are feeling good about their hiring. So, that’s excellent news. And VinFast is deep in the early part of clearing land — that is exactly what should be happening now that they’ve begun [doing so.] So, nothing exciting to report — but that is still moving forward and Wolfspeed is ahead of their initial, expected open date.
That’s really good news for residents [who have] the opportunity to work at these companies and some of the other companies that are coming into the area. You know, Toyota [and its battery manufacturing plant] is just over the county line in Liberty. [That is] a lot of wonderful opportunities for employment. Chatham County Schools and our community college are staying really well-engaged with both Wolfspeed and VinFast — but also with Toyota and some of the other big companies coming — so that residents have access to the jobs and time to train before the companies are actually up and running. It’s not necessarily a bad thing that they’re not all happening at the same time. We do have some time to build the workforce that’s gonna be required to meet the demands of all these incoming companies.
Stuckey: A follow up question here, that I am very ready to accept an ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘I’ll get back with you later on this.’ Is there there a mechanism in place where we’ll start seeing official data on how many folks from Chatham County are getting jobs at Wolfspeed, for example?
Howard: We may not see it with that level of particularity because when you hire someone, they don’t have to stay in Chatham, they don’t have to be living in Chatham. But the goal is that we are educating people so that they are actually ready. Someone who’s getting educated in Nebraska may have some of the skills that’s right, but Chatham County Schools and Central Carolina Community College students are going to have the exact skills, and have had opportunities to work in internships and other partnerships with these industries. That’s the goal.
But the county will start getting data so that we can track how well they are meeting the metrics for their [tax] incentives, the incentive policies that we’ve given to both. And those data will say the number of jobs — full-time and part-time — the salaries, all of the metrics that went into the incentives. Those will come through the [economic development corporation] and we’ll get updates from time to time. They don’t start in the first year, so they will have some time to build up… but yes, we will be getting that data.
Stuckey: I wanted to take a little bit of time here at the end here for a fun topic. I wanted to get a recommendation from you for a good Chatham County summer activity, or a way to beat the heat as we get back into the 90+ degree weather.
Howard: Yeah, there are so many! I think we are really lucky to live in a place that has waterways, as in Jordan Lake and rivers, and an active parts and recreation group in both the county and in the towns — so, in Siler City and Pittsboro and Goldston. There are lots of camps, but there are also, like, evening paddles. There are groups that do indoor activities, arts, movies in the park at night. There’s so much that is available through our parks and recreation. I think, for me, those are the things that jump out. It’s easy to find something to do almost any day of the week.
We may not always be able to avoid the heat — but with all of the walking trails, the shaded places and parks, it’s easy to find something somewhere that is more comfortable and still outdoors.
Featured image via Inside Climate News.
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As a resident of Bynum, I have to push back on Ms. Howard’s comments in that the County has been less than communicative with the residents of Bynum, and they should have known tank grinding was an inappropriate method of cleaning the tower – which is located in the middle of a residential community.
The last we heard was from the Chatham County Manager on June 22 when he emailed a member of the Bynum community to relay that future testing would focus on the “immediate area around the tank,” which given the length of time the tower grinding occurred (over several hours) and the wind speed and direction that day is insufficient as the lead and potentially chrome dust blew into Bynum. This is being ignored and instead the focus is on the garden adjacent to the tank.
There has been zero communication from the County to Bynum residents about the hazards of lead, how they can protect themselves, how they can safely and responsibly remove potential lead contamination from their homes, etc. It’s been handled very badly, quite frankly. Bynum residents have resorted to doing their own sampling to attempt to assess the spread of contamination in the village. Some have spent thousands of dollars on these efforts.
Also, the contract statement of work, which is linked in Lisa Sorg’s article, clearly states “clean all rusted areas using scrapers, hand and power wire brushes, in accordance with SSPC surface preparation methods #2 and #3, hand and power tool clean.” There is no mention in the contract about shrouding the tower, or following any lead abatement techniques, or using a lead encapsulant paint – even though the County was made aware in December of the presence of both lead and Cr6+ on the tank. Very unfortunate, indeed.