Amnesty day planned for residents in late April at landfill
By Matthew Whittle
Published in News on April 2, 2008 1:46 PM
As expected, the Wayne County Board of Commissioners approved Tuesday an "amnesty day" for the county landfill April 26.
Running from 7:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., the event will give county residents -- not commercial businesses or haulers -- the opportunity to bring their trash to the landfill without having to pay the regular $23-per-ton tipping fee.
"We do it once a year. We just try to give people an outlet for all this debris that we normally do charge for," county solid waste director Tim Rogers said. "It's to keep them from piling it in the woods and everywhere else, because some people just don't want to pay."
Accepted at the landfill will be all the usual items -- metals, appliances, tires, construction debris and unrecycled mixed trash. Though, Rogers noted, of those, the landfill only charges for construction debris and unrecycled trash anyway. Everything else is normally free to begin with.
"Most of the stuff we get on amnesty day we take for free anyway," he said. "But I know a lot of people probably leave that stuff till this time of year."
Also approved Tuesday was the scheduling of a public hearing for May 20 at 9:15 a.m. to receive input on a new county airport zoning overly zone.
The goal of the zone, which sets a maximum height limit of 500 feet around all three airports -- Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, Goldsboro Wayne Municipal Airport and Mount Olive Airport -- is to not only protect airspace, but also residents and businesses living nearby.
"Most of the county would be in an area that has a 500-foot restriction," county Planning Director Connie Price said.
It's a proposal that has the support of officials at the base and the Mount Olive and Goldsboro-Wayne airports.
He does not expect it to interfere with development in the county.
"I think it's good in that it will let people who want to build something tall know ahead of time where there could be problems. But in most cases, the height it allows is not a big deal," he said. "What it would prohibit would be tall towers like TV towers. Somebody trying to put up a house or even a regular cell tower (usually about 200 feet) would still be able to.
"About 99 percent of the things that are going to be built are going to be less than that anyway."