The Board of Commissioners is likely to vote Thursday night.

The county had been planning for about a decade on siting a transfer station on Eubanks Road in Chapel Hill, where the current landfill will reach capacity in 2011. But residents of the historically black Rogers Road community charged the commissioners with environmental racism for extending 30 years of solid-waste activities in their neighborhood.

Last fall, the board decided to open a search for a new site, and this fall chose three potential sites along N.C. 54 west of Carrboro. Staff is recommending the Howell land because the owners are willing to sell, meaning the county would not have to exercise eminent domain against either the Orange Water and Sewer Authority or the owner of an adjacent tree farm.

Though the commissioners toured the 43-acre OWASA site Friday and Monday, Solid Waste Director Gayle Wilson is concerned that a transfer station there might ultimately take the blame for delayed environmental impacts he thinks could occur from OWASA's current sludge dumping.

"We believe [the OWASA] land is better suited to act as a buffer to the adjoining [Howell] property,"

Residents of southwestern Orange County have organized against a transfer station, but Wilson said the county has considered every option.

Wilson said he actually preferred Eubanks Road or two sites in Hillsborough, but in the name of environmental justice and to avoid "uncooperative measures" from the town of Hillsborough it was better to proceed with a site on N.C. 54.

"Continued debate will not add substantively to the process or to the information already presented," he said.

Thursday's meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Southern Human Services Center, 2501 Homestead Road in Chapel Hill.

jesse.deconto@nando.com or 932-8760