The D.C. Council unanimously voted Tuesday to allow Mayor Muriel Bowser to invoke eminent domain on a trash transfer station in Northeast D.C. that nearby residents have pushed to close for decades. City officials say they plan to use the land to build a storage facility for government documents and equipment.

Proponents of the plan say that closing the trash transfer station — which is used to hold refuse brought in by trash trucks before it is transferred to bigger trucks to be taken to landfills or sorting facilities — will bring a measure of environmental justice to the majority black neighborhood of Brentwood, whose homes sit only a few hundred feet from the site.

“This is a win for neighbors, it’s a win for the quality of air that residents within the Brentwood community will breathe,” said Council member Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5), who represents the area and has long fought to close the trash transfer station, one of only two privately owned stations that remain in the city.

But the station’s owner says he wasn’t consulted on the plan — and that he didn’t even know about the eminent domain bill until he was indirectly informed of it by a WAMU reporter a day before the vote.

“You probably don’t want to quote me, because it was a four-letter word,” said Michael Magee, describing his reaction when he was told that Bowser and the Council were readying a bill to take his land. “I was definitely shocked.”

The private trash transfer station on W Street Northeast has been a point of contention for neighbors since it opened 30 years ago. They say it has fouled up the air and attracted rodents; there are lawsuits and regulatory attempts to shut it down stretching back decades.

The most recent attempt came in 2015, when McDuffie spearheaded a bill giving Bowser the power to take the transfer station’s land. In early 2016, McDuffie got a commitment from City Administrator Rashad Young that Bowser would first offer to buy the land — a $9.6 million offer was made — and, that failing, invoke eminent domain and take it. The offer went nowhere, but the city also did not act on its authority to take the land.

In early 2017, Magee and his partners at WB Waste Solutions, a private trash and recycling hauler, purchased the transfer station from the prior owners. Magee says he has since operated it responsibly and without significant complaints, and was told that eminent domain was off the table.

“We were told the issue was put to bed, there were no further problems. And we’ve had no issues since we owned the site. We’ve had one complaint because we had a broken garage door,” he said.

But Young kept his promise to McDuffie. On the Friday before Thanksgiving, Bowser sent the Council a draft bill that would authorize her to use eminent domain to take the land. On Tuesday, less than 10 days later, the Council voted on the move as an emergency bill, doing away with the usual requirement that public hearings be held.

In a letter to the Council, Bowser justified the quick action by saying that the city is running low on storage facilities for documents and equipment, and the trash transfer station would be a “strong site for warehousing and storage purposes.” D.C. spokeswoman Olivia Dedner says there was no need to notify Magee ahead of the vote.

“We don’t have to notify the property owner about the eminent domain legislation,” she said. “However, should the legislation pass, it authorizes the mayor to use eminent domain, but that process says we get a new appraisal and go into negotiations. If negotiations fail, it gives us another tool in our back pocket.”

If eminent domain is used, D.C. is still required to compensate Magee for the land. The final compensation is decided by a judge.

Eminent domain has been used sparingly by D.C. in recent decades. It was used to cobble together the land needed both for Nationals Park and Audi Field. In the latter case, a judge granted the landowner more than what D.C. had offered to pay by way of compensation. The city has appealed that ruling. It was also on the table as an option for land needed to build family homeless shelters that will replace the shuttered D.C. General shelter.

Beyond being caught off guard by the sudden move, Magee says he worries that D.C. officials aren’t properly considering what taking his trash transfer station offline will mean for the whole city. He says it processes 1,400 tons of refuse a day, and that the two city-owned transfer stations are operating at capacity. (In 2015, D.C. took in roughly 450,000 tons of trash and recycling at its two trash transfer stations. That comes from D.C trucks, which collect from homes, and private haulers.)

“What are they going to do when 1,400 tons hits the door? There’s nowhere else to take it,” he said. “We’re worried about them taking our business and us not being able to take the trash off the streets.”

D.C. residents have long groused about private trash transfer stations, which were much more numerous in the city prior to efforts in the late 1990s to close them and upgrade the two public stations, at Fort Totten and Benning Road. Many of the private stations were located in Ward 5, which contained a majority of D.C.’s industrial-zoned land.

Since he was first elected in 2012, McDuffie has pushed to repurpose that industrial land for other kinds of business, including green, food and tech uses. In 2014, a task force he helped create released a report outlining just how that could happen.

“This is one of the top environmental justice issues plaguing the District Columbia, and this is a very positive step,” he said.

But Magee said he was surprised at the speed with which the Council voted to let Bowser take his land, should she choose to.

“I’m surprised there was no discussion about what they’re going to do with the trash,” he said.

This story was originally published on WAMU.