The Orange County commissioners last week discussed the possibility of extending the life of the county landfill on Eubanks Road until as late as 2018. That would be five years after its currently scheduled closing date, and almost 50 years after it opened in 1972.

To no one's surprise, the news of a possible extension of landfill operations on Eubanks Road sparked a swift backlash from nearby residents and their supporters.

They slammed the board for even considering extending the life of a facility that neighbors say has subjected them for years to fouled groundwater, noxious odors, roaring trucks and other nasty effects. They've been waiting four decades for the landfill to close. It was originally supposed to reach capacity in 1997, but that date has been extended again and again. Each extension has come as a blow to the neighbors, and the prospect of moving the finish line yet again is the last thing they residents want to hear.

They are bitter not only about the malodorous and possibly unhealthy effects of living next to the county's garbage dump. They're also badly stung by what they characterize as a long string of broken promises, dating all the way back to the landfill's beginnings, when some say town and county officials assured them the landfill would be temporary, would last no more than 10 or 20 years and then would be replaced by a park.

If that promise was made, so far as we can tell, it was never documented or made official.

But later assurances, to compensate neighbors by installing water and sewer lines and other amenities, were committed to paper and still have not been fully met.

That's what prompted Commissioner Valerie Foushee to say, in an impassioned and remarkable comment, that she was "appalled" that progress on those mitigations has not yet been made and that she and the board must "take the blame." "I will not vote to extend the life of the landfill until we talk about enhancing the quality of life for the people who live in the Rogers Road community," she said.

We're pretty appalled, too, that the county, having had literally decades to come up with a solution for the solid waste problem post-Eubanks Road, still hasn't done that.

The current plan - to send our garbage to Durham's transfer station - is a stopgap measure. Extending the existing landfill for two or four years amounts to more stalling for time, postponing yet again the responsibility of making a decision to produce a permanent and workable solution.

Nobody wants a landfill anywhere nearby, and yet for many reasons it make sense to site one near the population centers that produce the trash. Whatever decision the commissioners ultimately make, assuming they do ultimately make one, will be wildly unpopular with some segment of their constituency.

But leadership means making those decisions anyway.

We don't envy the commissioners' position. They face a monumentally difficult task.

So difficult, in fact, that the decision to do the right thing by the Rogers Road neighbors and live up to the assurances of compensation seems like an easy call by comparison.