The fundamental question is simple: What do we do with our garbage after the existing landfill fills up?

But the search for a solution to that problem has taken more turns than the vultures that wheel incessantly over Eubanks Road.

About all that seems established thus far is this: We're not looking for a site for a new landfill, but for a site for a waste transfer station, where garbage will be transferred from big trucks to much bigger trucks, which will haul it away to a disposal site somewhere outside Orange County. And we're not going to put the transfer site on the existing landfill property next to the long-suffering Rogers Road neighborhood.

Beyond that, the target has been ever-shifting. All signs were pointing to a big (and expensive) tract in the White Cross area, until Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy made an 11th-hour pitch to consider a town-owned site on Millhouse Road.

Talk about a re-opening a can of worms. Because Millhouse Road is not far from Rogers Road, Foy's suggestion revived the opposition of those residents and raised a lot of questions. Is Millhouse Road part of the "Rogers Road neighborhood," and therefore off-limits? Did the mayor, in a May 1 meeting with some Rogers Road residents, "promise" that Millhouse Road would be taken off the table if they opposed it?

Those are questions that deserve answers, but they don't really get at the biggest question: Where is the best place to put a solid waste transfer station?

Like so much of the discussion thus far, most of the recent chatter has focused on where NOT to put a transfer station. The Rogers Road folks say don't put it on Millhouse Road. Just a few days ago the Orange County Organizing Committee and the Orange County Sierra Club group came out with a statement saying don't put it at White Cross.

There's been a lot of that. Few people have offered positive ideas -- that is, ideas that propose a solution. And that approach doesn't get us much closer to the answer we really need: where TO put it.

To his credit, and in spite of the controversy his Millhouse Road idea has stirred up, Foy at least proposed a potential solution. He's been criticized for mucking up the works by introducing a new site this late in the game, but frankly we wish more people were proposing possible solutions than objecting to them.

Millhouse Road has advantages the White Cross site doesn't have. It's close to the highway, it's the right size, and it's already publicly owned and so could save hundreds of thousands of dollars, which could help Rogers Road finally get the sewage lines and other compensation it deserves. It also has potential downsides, mostly related to access and truck traffic in an area that is quickly filling in with homes, schools, parks and other features. It may turn out not to be the right place, but it was right to bring it up for discussion.

We're wrestling with all of this now because we didn't adequately come up with a plan for disposing of our own garbage years ago. The vultures have come home to roost.