Just a week after Asheville City Manager Debra Campbell announced that storm debris would be stored in two residential areas in West Asheville and at the just-renovated Donald Ross-designed Asheville Municipal Golf Course, the city will instead stage mounds of brush, appliances, paint, household batteries and chemicals and building materials at the Enka Commerce Park in Candler.
“[The new location] will now be the main site where storm debris will be taken to be staged, ground, compacted and prepared for hauling out of the city,” Campbell said Oct. 21.
Campbell had announced Oct. 14 that temporary debris storage and reduction (TDSR) sites would arise at Roger Farmer Park, 71 Deaverview Road and 65 Ford St. She added the golf course two days later.
The Ford Street site is adjacent to Mountain Housing Opportunities’ Westmore Apartments and across the street from Asheville Housing Authority’s Deaverview Apartments. Roger Farmer Park, less than a half a mile away, is near the Deaverview community. The neighborhood consists mainly of low-income and affordable housing.
When debris began piling up at the Ford Street site, residents strongly objected.
“Kids live here,” proclaimed signs seen Oct. 18 on Deaverview Road. Taylon Breanne and Aislinn Dugan held up a banner that spelled out their grievances: “No dumping toxic waste in our neighborhood.”
“We were shocked this morning when we learned about the site, just because it’s residential zoning here,” Breanne said.
But Campbell changed course Oct. 21, saying that no additional debris will be taken to the Ford Street location, but security and site preparation measures such as fencing and access for heavy machinery will continue at Ford Street and the golf course sites in case they are needed later. No debris would be stored at Roger Farmer Park.
Timeline — to be determined
In the meantime, the piles of construction material at the Ford Street site will be compacted and prepared for hauling out of the city, Kelley Klope, strategic communications specialist with Asheville Fire Department, writes in an email to Xpress. “We do not have a timeline on this yet.”
Campbell said earlier that the sites were chosen because they are city-owned properties and could be activated quickly. The city has to find temporary staging areas for organic waste like trees and vegetation, construction and demolition materials like drywall, lumber and carpet, as well as appliances and electronics like refrigerators, washers and televisions and computers, and household hazardous waste like batteries, pesticides and paint, Campbell said.
Once sorted, the materials are processed on-site before they are taken to a final permanent location. Processing includes grinding trees to wood chips, crushing large rubble to aggregate and compacting metals.
A reference sheet released on Oct. 13 by the city’s Joint Information Center (JIC), a central public information location set up in the wake of Tropical Storm Helene, says TDSR sites may incinerate organic materials by using air curtain burners, which is an alternative to traditional open burning that produces less smoke and particulate matter by passing smoke through a stack of filters.
“All of these activities will possibly produce noise, dust and smells,” Campbell said.
Although the sites are designated to be temporary, they could be in operation for as long as a year, Campbell said.
Breanne also expressed concerns about the city’s plans for air curtain burners.
“If we’re going to burn the trash, what kind of air pollution is the city going to be breathing in?” Breanne asked. “The county has an air pollution quality standard ordinance that says the county has to give at least a week’s notice to these neighborhoods before they put any kind of thing in the air that could potentially be toxic.”
“We agree we need to clean up what’s happened. It’s a disaster,” said Dugan. “But I think there are definitely better solutions to where that can happen, rather than in very thickly settled neighborhoods.”
Health concerns remain
Geoffrey Barton, president and CEO of nonprofit Mountain Housing Opportunities, also objected to locating the debris fields in residential areas. Barton noted that the 65 Ford St. property has been studied by the City of Asheville and the Asheville Housing Authority as a potential housing development site, and its use as a TDSR site could jeopardize plans to develop housing there.
“It seems like there are probably plenty of sites that could have been a better location,” Barton said of the two sites. “I agree that [storm waste removal] is a priority, but it doesn’t feel like sufficient thought was put into the potential long-term impacts of this on adjacent residents.”
According to Barton, the city says they notified neighbors at Westmore by sending staff members door-to-door before the operation was set up. Xpress talked with six people at Westmore on Friday, and all said that no one contacted them.
“When it comes to subsidized housing, they always put it near or over a landfill,” Phylis Hagens, a resident of Westmore Apartments, told Xpress on Oct. 18. “I think they should put [the site] in an area where there are no people.”
Molly Katherine Steen, another Westmore tenant, feared that people could get sick from living so close to the Ford Street dump.
“Can they take care of all these people that are going to get sick from all the trash and everything that’s going to be put out here?” Steen asked. “It’s not healthy for children or anybody.”
At 65 Ford St., Breanne and Dugan said they and other Deaverview residents had met with Asheville City Council member Kim Roney on Oct. 18 to voice concerns about the sites. Roney posted on her Instagram page later that day that dumping at 65 Ford St. had been discontinued.
A big cleanup ahead
Greg Shuping, a consultant serving as deputy emergency operations center manager for the city, said that the debris from the city could exceed 2.5 million cubic yards.
‘The safest thing we can do for our environment, our economy and our community is to remove storm debris from our homes and business areas as quickly and as responsibly as possible. There is and continues to be a sense of urgency about debris removal, the longer storm debris remains in our neighborhoods and business areas, the longer we are living with fire and safety hazards,” Campbell said on Oct. 21.
“We will continue to diligently monitor the temporary sites to ensure environmental regulations are met and safety will remain at the forefront of every decision we make,” Campbell said.
Shuping stressed that SDR, the Greer, S.C.-based company contracted by the city and county to remove debris, is held to local, state and federal regulations that make sure hazardous materials do not come to the sites.
“We have already engaged with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the N.C. Division of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ). No hazardous materials will be taken to the temporary debris staging areas,” Shuping said.
In a follow-up Instagram message on Oct. 19, Roney referenced the Congressional Research Service within the Library of Congress regarding the risks posed by TDSR sites:
“The fact that the disaster debris [at the sites] may not be subject to federal hazardous waste management standards does not mean the waste is not hazardous or will pose no risk to human health or safety or to the environment,” Roney said.
As for public input on TDSR sites, Roney said that City Council will hear a presentation on debris management as part of a presentation and reports at its meeting at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 22.
Roney noted that the public can speak on any matter during general public comments at the end of the meeting. The meeting is scheduled to end at 5:50 p.m., so Council members can attend a 6 p.m. candlelight vigil in Pack Square.
Editor’s note: This is a developing story.
Could any of the large logs be taken directly to sawmills? We have millions of dollars of lumber out there waiting to be milled rather than chipped.
Really good news and great coverage. Thanks to the protesters . if I was still in West Asheville , where I grew up , I would have been out there with them.
Just as a fyi, Enka Commerce Park is also within the city limits. So technically they have decided to move it to the edges of the city limits but still within the boundaries..