Chapel Hill agrees to participate in CoGen Transformation Project planning

GOVERNMENT

By Adam Powell
Correspondent

CHAPEL HILL –Following an approval by its Town Council on September 25, the Town of Chapel Hill formally entered into the pre-planning stages of the CoGen Transformation Project – a proposed 10.8 mile sustainability initiative that will replace the existing CoGen plant rail spur – which transports coal to the CoGen facility – with infrastructure for walkers, runners, and bikers.

John Richardson, Chapel Hill’s Community Sustainability Manager, came before the council in late September to provide more details about the CoGen Transformation Project. The project aims to leverage an existing but increasingly obsolete resource to envision better connectivity, along with improved vitality, economic development, and environmental sustainability in Orange County.

Chapel Hill would become part of a wide-ranging, collaborative process to come up with long-term solutions to replacing the CoGen rail spur. The Memorandum of Understanding is a basic initial phase of the work that will allow the collaborating organizations and municipalities to seek grant funding for the multi-year planning that will have to take place.

“The rail spur transports coal for the CoGen plant located on UNC campus. And when I say ‘CoGen’, I mean cogeneration, which refers to the fact that the plant generates both steam and power. So if the town decides to officially participate, elected officials and staff can be included in a long-term planning process that could support multiple town goals related to housing, the environment, connectivity and economic development. And of course, the opposite could be true if we do not participate. This planning effort would go forward and it could potentially be misaligned with our goals and local development activities if we’re not part of those conversations.”

Chapel Hill mayor Jessica Anderson signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOA) in early October, and the Town of Carrboro and Orange County had already signed the agreement. The two remaining project partners—the University of North Carolina of Chapel Hill and the Southern Environmental Law Center—will now be compelled to sign the agreement as well.

Prior to the council’s affirmative vote on the project, Richardson explained that by participating, North Carolina State Senator Graig Meyer, who represents the state’s 23rd District, including portions of Caswell, Person, and Orange Counties, also came before the Town Council to express his support for the project.

“I want to take a second to help you (council members) understand the scope of what we’re talking about here and why it’s important to have this multi-jurisdictional agreement for a project that I really think will be one of the most transformational projects for southern Orange County over the next 20 years,” Meyer explained.

Meyer indicated that the process will require two stages. First, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will have to officially declare the GoGen rail spur obsolete and no longer utilize it as a fuel resource.

“Stage one is that the university has to transition away from burnable fuels at the cogeneration plant,” Meyer said. “That’s what will eliminate the need for the rail line to be used for the transportation of those fuels, whether coal or something else that’s burnable.”

Although Meyer couldn’t provide town leaders a specific timeline for when UNC may pull away from coal usage at the cogeneration plant – a process that could realistically take many years – he did indicate that the University had expressed interest in eventually moving away from coal, and was willing to work with municipal and county leaders for future solutions. The University could benefit greatly from a long, multi-use path that accommodates students and town residents while helping them achieve the aim of transitioning away from fossil fuels. 

“We do have participation from the University in this working group, because they also have the goal of getting to the point of stopping using burnable fuels,” Meyer explained. “And they would also have a significant strategic benefit from the transformation of the rail line into a multi-purpose corridor.”

“This could take 10 years, 20 years to be able to accomplish all of this,” the State Senator added.

Meyer displayed a map of the entire 10.8 mile current rail line, which runs from the cogeneration plant on the UNC campus through downtown Carrboro, through sections of Chapel Hill and up into incorporated areas of rural northern Orange County, near parts of Hillsborough and Durham. However, Meyer indicated that the project would not run into incorporated areas of Hillsborough, which is why they were not party to the agreement.

“The folks at Central Pines Regional Council, who have been staffing this effort for us and their contractors at the site collaborative, made this smart assessment that there’s really three pieces of what the rail line transformation would be – a downtown piece, which is really the central core of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and then the suburban piece, where it goes largely through neighborhoods and future land that will be able to be developed in the future. Then a rural section where, once it crosses into the rural buffer and goes up into unincorporated Orange County. It’s mainly going through neighborhoods and woodland, and will have different purposes. It would largely be recreational at that point.”

The State Senator revealed that the rail line transport transformation has the potential to open up the largest plots of land available in southern Orange County for economic development, housing development, and university-community partnership in the coming years.

“Even though we don’t know when this transformation will happen, the scope and scale of the change that will happen means that we should start planning for it now,” Meyer said.

Meyer pointed out a cement plant adjacent to the cogeneration plant across Merritt Mill Road that essentially land locks a piece of state-owned property that is not currently being utilized. He believes the University sees this as a strategic opportunity to acquire a large tract of available land that connects to the current campus, and could become a significant factor in this project’s evolution.

“I think the University is smart enough to realize that those two pieces of property together would be the largest pieces of property contiguous to the main University campus that they will ever again have access to,” Senator Meyer explained. “And so they understand the importance of all of this land access. And for a University that’s actively trying to figure out, how do we transport thousands of workers and students onto campus every day, having something that might turn into a multimodal corridor would be a significant transportation advantage for their long term strategic needs as well.”

Meyer compared and contrasted similar types of transformative sustainability projects in other southeastern communities, such as the American Tobacco Trail in Durham and the Beltline in Atlanta. Due to the specific nature and location of the rail line in question, Meyer’s vision has the CoGen Transformation Project more resembling the work that has taken place in Atlanta.

“Carrboro, if you just think about the land use, has a ton of unused commercial property, because the rail line prevents them from being able to have specific uses which would all of a sudden change (with new zoning),” Meyer indicated. “And that piece alone makes this different than a project that we’re very familiar with next door, which is the American Tobacco Trail, which hasn’t had significant economic development along it. This is more similar to what has happened in the Beltline in Atlanta, where they took a previous use for an automotive pathway and turned it into a multimodal pathway and had huge economic development in sections of it. That’s more of what I think is possible in the Carrboro section and the edge of Chapel Hill’s downtown.”

Following Meyer’s presentation, town leaders agreed to commit to the memorandum of agreement, allowing Central Pines Regional Council to work as a coordinating group to pursue funding for various planning initiatives, likely through federal grants. Meyer added that the project has already received a $50,000 matching commitment from the North Carolina Railroad Commission.

“That is a financial commitment that they have made to demonstrate that they want to help us with this rail line transition. They do not imagine it staying a part of the active rail use network. They would like to see it turned into a different use eventually,” the State Senator said.

Meyer added that the project has additional financial commitments in smaller amounts already in that the University and Southern Environmental Law Center are splitting the bill for the costs of Central Pines Regional Council’s valuable research and coordinating work.

“As many of you know, we don’t often see a lot of collaboration between the University and Southern Environmental Law Center. So we have folks who have been on other sides of other issues collaborating to try and bring this forward as a shared vision,” Meyer expressed to the council.

“I am incredibly excited about this,” said council member Melissa McCullough prior to a unanimous vote from council in favor of approving the memorandum of understanding. “I think it’s very important to figure out what the scope of the opportunities of this are going to be. I was at the bike summit earlier (this fall), and it’s interesting how many people cannot drive, especially because of disabilities. And so as we move towards a less car-dependent lifestyle, we need to keep recognizing that there are people who just cannot (drive cars). And so, given that the pieces of land that line up along this rail line are available for for development and for use for trail-oriented development – which is which is growing in importance as transit-oriented development – I think it’s a great idea.”

Adam Powell is a reporter on local news and sports and an education communications professional. A 2001 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, Powell has served as managing editor of multiple local publications, including the Mebane Enterprise, News of Orange County and TarHeelIllustrated.com. The public information officer for Rockingham County Schools in Eden, N.C., Powell is the author of four books and lives in Mebane with his wife and two children. This reporter can be reached at: Info@TheLocal Reporter.press