By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- What began this spring as a feeler is turning into something like a formal negotiation as Durham and Orange County officials continue to discuss the possibility of Orange County's using the city waste transfer station.

City Manager Tom Bonfield this month sought and received the City Council's permission to continue the talks, which so far have involved at least two high-level meetings between elected officials and administrators.

The council's endorsement clears the way for Durham Solid Waste Management Director Donald Long to meet with his Orange County counterpart, Gayle Wilson, to discuss specifics.

The manager's request -- which echoed one from Orange County Commissioners Chairwoman Val Foushee -- didn't draw an objection or even a question from any of the City Council's seven members.

"I don't particularly see a downside for us if we negotiate decent arrangements," Bonfield said.

Indeed, the pressure at this time is all on the Orange County side.

Commissioners there have been debating whether and where to build a transfer station of their own to replace the existing Orange Regional Landfill on Eubanks Road near Chapel Hill.

A transfer station is simply a place where local garbage trucks can drop off waste for a few hours until workers load it onto long-haul trucks bound for a landfill in another community.

Durham ships its trash to a landfill near Lawrenceville, Va., some 90 miles away.

The Orange commissioners' quandary is that the possible sites they've considered all have generated substantial public opposition.

Locating a transfer station near Orange's existing landfill is unpopular even among elected officials in that county because the area is historically black.

Even though it's partially gentrified over the last couple of decades, with the development of well-to-do subdivisions like Meadow Run and Heartwood at Blackwood Mountain, critics maintain that placing additional waste-handling facilities there would amount to environmental racism.

Orange officials are also looking at a site in the western part of their county. But there they've run into objections from rural residents still angry about land takings associated with the construction of a reservoir for Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and more recently talk of building a small airport in the vicinity.

The slow-moving siting debate has gone on so long that Foushee said in a letter to Durham officials last month that no matter what else happens, it's likely her government will need to use the city's Club Boulevard station as a stopgap.

"If we do select a site in Orange County, the timing associated with designing, permitting and construction [of] a new transfer station would most likely exceed the remaining life cycle of the county's current landfill," she said. "That would generate a need for an alternative site while construction is completed."

Durham officials are interested in replacing the Club Boulevard transfer station, perhaps with Orange County as a financial backer of the effort.

But even if Orange leaders choose to build their own, Durham officials would still "negotiate a decent tipping fee" that would partly offset some of the bills they incur for operating the Club Boulevard station, Bonfield said.

"To me, it's an opportunity for a good business decision on our part," he added.

Bonfield voiced optimism even when asked if it looked to him like using Durham's station was Orange officials' first-choice option -- an important point, given that Orange officials have backed away from key decisions involving solid-waste policy several times over the past 15 years or so.

"If nothing else, the number of people who've come to the meetings has been very substantial, and at a very high level," he said, alluding to the presence of elected officials and senior administrators in the talks held to date. "I have no reason to think they're anything but very serious about it."