The 50-year-old Waynor Road community, surrounded by an affluent area of Moore County, will finally receive much needed municipal water and sewer service thanks to nearly 1½ years of organizing and petitioning coordinated by the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law.
The $1.1 million Waynor Road project will connect 75 residents, mostly African-Americans, to basic municipal utilities for the first time. The Town of Southern Pines, which has committed more than $300,000 toward the project, on Monday (Feb. 25) was awarded a $750,000 Community Development Block Grant to pay for the balance. The project is expected to be completed within two years.
The center helped Waynor Road residents test neighborhood wells, conduct a neighborhood needs assessments, evaluate their options, build influence with the town council, obtain tax-exempt status for their community association and facilitate trainings for other similarly situated communities across the state.
The center has been a pioneer in identifying and fighting against municipal underbounding, a modern form of residential segregation that occurs when cities and towns expand around communities without including them in the city limits where municipal services are provided.
“It demonstrates that success can be attained with a strategic combination of grassroots efforts in which citizens work together, engage in informed advocacy, stay diligent to monitor public bodies and exert influence for the benefit of their previously neglected communities,” said Diane Standaert, a center fellow who led efforts in Waynor Road for the past 18 months.
The Waynor Road community is one of three historically black neighborhoods in Moore County that the center has helped with legal and advocacy support over the last four years. The other communities are Jackson Hamlet and Midway. Combined, these communities have received $3 million in local and federal funding to extend water and sewer to their residents’ homes.
Waynor Road residents know that the funding is important, but they believe that an even more important indicator of success is an empowered and cohesive community. After years of asking for water and sewer on his own, Waynor Road resident Tommy Jones witnessed the success of Midway and Jackson Hamlet. As result, he called a meeting under his carport in September 2006 to encourage his own community to organize. It worked. The community and staff from the Center for Civil Rights have met every month since that time.
“Once the process started, we took self out of mind. It wasn’t about what is best for just me, but what is best for the whole community,” said Robert Whitaker, vice president of Waynor Road in Action.
Joyce Ray, the group’s secretary, adds that their greatest strength now is unity: “This success involved building confidence and trust as we went along. As a community, we asked ourselves questions over and over to make sure that everyone understood and stayed on the same page.”
Until the water and sewer lines are connected, Waynor Road residents will continue to rely on deteriorating private wells and failing septic tanks. The next step for the Waynor Road community is to petition for voluntary annexation into the Town of Southern Pines. This will give residents the right to vote in Southern Pines elections and access to other essential city services, such as police and sanitation services. The center is also providing legal support in this effort. In the long term, residents believe what they’ve accomplished will enable them to carry out their vision of a bright future for their community, which includes building a community center, passing their land on to their children and creating a neighborhood that people want to stay in and return to.
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Center for Civil Rights: (919) 843-3921, www.law.unc.edu/centers/civilrights
School of Law contact: Matt Marvin, (919) 962-4125, mmarvin@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: Susan Houston, (919) 962-8415, susan_houston@unc.edu