About twenty miles southwest of Raleigh, there is an historic community that has been struggling to preserve its legacy and future due to the development of neighboring Apex, Cary, and other towns.
New Hill, North Carolina, a former prosperous train stop and later a charming town with a along the bustling US 1, a road that was for decades the main route between Florida and the Northeast, reminds us of an earlier time before the sprawl of the Triangle. Home to the neighboring Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant which was built in the 1980s, New Hill is being targeted by again by local towns for a new 230-acre site for a sewage treatment plant, which its residents cannot even use.
The New Hill Historic District, which is targeted for the 230 -acre site that was once a family farm, has over 60 buildings that belong to the National Register of Historic Places. Yet this history was “not considered” when the Cary Town Council voted to put a new sewage treatment plant in the center of the historic community.
The population within a half-mile radius of the proposed site is about 80 percent African American, and mostly poor and elderly. The towns of Cary, Apex, Holly Springs, and Morrisville are 19 percent minority populations on average. Two Gothic Revival churches and many other historic buildings lie either next to or across the street from the proposed wastewater treatment site, as well as historic cemeteries and hundreds of residents.
Many residents remember the construction of the Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant, and remain very frustrated by attempts of larger cities to take advantage of the New Hill community’s lack of political clout and resources to stop it once again. The New Hill Community Association has been fighting this plan for several years now. Check them out in action .
The placement of the wastewater treatment plant in the center of New Hill is an example of environmental racism, a term popularized in North Carolina by an African American community organizing against the negative impacts of a hazardous waste landfill.
The Western Wake Partner’s proposed $329 million plant in New Hill was pushed by four cities (Apex, Cary, Holly Springs, and Morrisville) in a way that was entirely unaccountable to the desires of the New Hill community.
The US Army Corp of Engineers have identified three qualified alternative sites equal or better than the 230-acre site in New Hill’s historic district, which would have little or no human impact or environmental justice concerns. Yet still the leaders in Cary and Apex have continued to push for the construction of the plant in New Hill.
Importantly, no decision in regards to the management of sewage residue from the sewage treatment plant have been made or any decision about whether or where it will be applied to land. The environmental impact of where millions of gallons of sewage would be discharged have not been adequately considered, greatly hurting the public’s ability to weigh the impacts of this proposal.
On Thursday, August 13, New Hill community members and allies will meet to watch the film “Sludge Diet”. We will be meeting at 7 pm at the New Hill Baptist Church at 3700 Old US 1 in New Hill. Everyone is invited to come and discuss the negative environmental, health, and cultural impacts of a sewage treatment plant in New Hill and the steps being taken to stop the plant.
If you are part of an organization which would like to support the New Hill community’s efforts to stop the Western Wake Partners attempts to place a sewage treatment in the heart of historic New Hill, check out the resolution here and contact scott@scsj.org.
