Alamance, Orange, & Chatham Counties' Alert

Yes, the area around Stericycle is changing indeed. Once a rural area with cow pastures and woods, Stericycle is now the next door neighbor to planned housing developments for more than a thousand homes. Families with small children and pregnant women will soon live close to the plumes. Population growth is forecast to continue.

Stericycle is in the eastern part of Alamance County, very close to the western border of Orange County and to the north of Chatham County. Prevailing winds carry incinerator emissions within Alamance County and to adjacent Orange and Chatham counties (and further).

Do you live or work in Alamance, Orange or Chatham counties?
By typing/pasting the Stericycle NC address into an online map, you can see how close you are to Stericycle's medical waste incinerators. Incinerators have the most impact on local areas as winds distribute the majority of the emissions nearby. Here is the address: Stericycle, 1168 Porter Avenue, Haw River, North Carolina 27258

Do you enjoy our natural water resources?
Do you use them for recreation, viewing natural habitats, or maybe they are a source for your drinking water? We're talking about the Haw River, the Haw watershed, and the threats they face from pollution from Stericycle incinerators.

Stericycle's backyard borders directly on Back Creek. It empties into the nearby Haw River. Stericycle's stacks emit pollutants into the air over the Haw River Basin. Natural settling and rains bring many pollutants to the ground.

Consider:

• The Haw River supplies Pittsboro with it's drinking water.
• With drought conditions, OWASA has discussed piping water from the Haw River to refill the Cane Creek reservoir - drinking water for Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange county.
• The Haw River supplies Pittsboro with it's drinking water.
• The Haw River feeds into Jordan Lake, a drinking water source for Cary, north Chatham and western Wake.
• The Haw River flows into the Cape Fear Basin, and down to Wilmington.
• A fish advisory for mercury is already in place south of I-85 that limits how much fish the public should eat from waters that include the Haw River and Jordan Lake. Young children and pregnant women are particularly vulnerable.
  We don't need to add more dangerous mercury pollution from incineration fallout.

Better and safer solutions than incineration already exist for such toxic medical waste produced by hospitals and other health care facilities. Stericycle and other medical waste companies already provide some of these alternative technologies today in N.C. (eg, autoclave and other technologies). We should not be trying to fix one public health problem by creating another!

The times... they are a changin'... It's time to end incineration in Haw River, NC.

Put your concerns into action. Volunteer for the Stericycle Awareness Campaign

"What is the right thing? Simply put, it is the elimination of all incineration of medical waste not required by law to be burned." Martha Hamblin, GASP, at Stericyle Annual Stockholder Meeting