Good news for Apex residents - EQ can't rebuild

Great news for Apex residents... The State of North Carolina Division of Waste Management said Tuesday that EQ is being barred from rebuilding the Apex facility destroyed in its recent chemical fire. EQ bypassed Town of Apex and sought to have the state grant an exception on a recent Town of Apex declaration because the company had been established in the now mostly residential area prior to town zoning changes banning hazardous material facilities in the area. This is good news for the thousands of Apex residents living near the former facility and may help to reduce anxiety about such a facility appearing nearby in the future.

A March 7, 2007, News and Observer provides details of the ruling...

News and Observer
March 7, 2007
Toby Coleman, Staff Writer

Hazmat plant can't rebuild
State: Violations were not reported

EQ Industrial Services kept silent about fires and chemical reactions that plagued its Apex hazardous waste warehouse in the two years before it blew up, the state Division of Waste Management said Tuesday as it barred the company from rebuilding.

State regulators say EQ flouted reporting rules intended to ensure that the people who live and work around hazardous waste warehouse are safe. They said the company should lose its permit to operate on Apex's Investment Boulevard and pay a $553,225 fine because it did not submit required reports of two fires and three potentially dangerous chemical reactions.

"Our actions today send a clear message that the state of North Carolina will not tolerate non-compliance with rules and non-reporting of incidents that occur at commercial hazardous waste facilities across the state," division director Dexter Matthews said in a prepared statement. Read more...

Search Angels seeking for identity

Searching for identity in past records requires good research skills, compassion, a strong interest in helping others and being able to talk and work with others. "It is a tedious, all-hours enterprise made more difficult by a state law under which all adoptees' original birth certificates are forever sealed." Some private individuals do this for fun and the sheer pleasure of finding out about the past. Commercial businesses charge up to $3,000 for birth-family searches but "search angels" do it for nothing more than the satisfaction of helping adoptees answer the universal human query of where they came from.

Read the article from the February, 2007, News and Observer...

News and Observer
February 4, 2007
Martha Quillan, Staff Writer

On a quest to unlock identity

APEX - On May 6, 1958, a young Buncombe County woman, maybe afraid and probably alone, gave birth to a baby girl she called Pamela. Unable or unprepared to care for a child, the woman signed some papers, handed the baby over to an adoption agency and resumed her life.

If that woman is still alive, somewhere, sometime -- it may be weeks, it could be years -- her phone is going to ring. And Martha Mills, the daughter she may have thought she never would see again, will be on the line.

Mills believes this because she has an angel on the case: Joanna Freitag, one of dozens of "search angels" in North Carolina. Their mission is to help adult adoptees track down their birth families. Read more...

NC 55 Widening in Wake County

According to Bruce Siceloff's note in the December 19 News and Observer the long awaited widening of NC 55 is about to be completed.

Mr. Siceloff had this to say in his December 19th article about NC 55 widening: "No fooling. By the end of this week, the state Department of Transportation expects to have all four lanes of N.C. 55 open for traffic from U.S. 64 in Apex north to Interstate 40."

Unfortunately neither the State DOT or the Town of Apex has a solution to address the fact that the part of NC55 through the southern part of Apex is now and will remain the sole major bottleneck providing commuters with a daily dose of traffic frustrations. There is no plan to replace the old train underpass in Apex or widen the part of NC55 that goes right through town so most of the commuters will still turn off NC55 and take short cuts through neighborhood streets as they have been doing for many years.

This is yet another demonstration of the shortsightedness of the State and the Town in getting ahead of traffic and being able to handle the rapid growth that wont slow down in our lifetimes.

The Town of Apex has recently released an announcement that a plan has been set in motion to add a new section of the "Apex Peakway" that is intended to provide a route to connect both ends of the NC55 Apex blockade but this will be at least two or three years (if not more) in the making. Even then commuters will have to make additional turns and navigate onto town streets to go around the bottleneck.

If you are one of the many that has to deal with this never ending problem get in touch with your state House or Senate representatives or the head of NC DOT and let them know what you think!