NCD980602163_20020622_Warren County PCB Landfill_SERB C_Open House - Warren County PCB Landfill Detoxification Project-OCR

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f WARREN COUNTY PCB LANDFILL DETOXIFICATION PROJECT i!
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if lll■■■■~~~~~~~~~~ i! f -------------------~ ~ Saturday, June 22, 2002 9 AM TO 12 PM ~
i! i! i! Tour new treatment facilities ~ f Meet personnel that will be operating the equipment 4;J
Pt Discuss the technology that will be used for detoxification Pt
-w Understand what will be going on udown the road" -w ~ ~
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f DON'T MISS THE CHANCE TO SEE THE EQUIPMENT UP CLOSE PRIOR ~ f TO THE TREATMENT OF PCB-CONTAMINATED SOIL. if f AcaN tt'i/1 be l1!Sl1fcletl ffller slalfrf/l due to Sll/e(y ll?(IUIIT!llll?llls. ~
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Excerpts from
Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality
Bullard, R. D. 1990. Dumping in Dixie: Race, class, and environmental quality. Boulder, CO:
Westview.
Toxic-waste disposal has generated demonstrations in many communities across the country.
The first national protest by blacks on the hazardous-waste issue occurred in 1982.
demonstrations and protests were triggered after Warren County, North Carolina, which is
mostly black, was selected as the burial site for more than 32,000 cubic yards of soil
contaminated with highly toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). The soil had been illegally
dumped along the roadways in fourteen North Carolina counties in 1978.
What was the source of the PCBs? The PCBs originated from the Raleigh-based Ward Transfer
Company. A Jamestown, New York, trucking operation owned by Robert J. Burns obtained the
PCB-laced oil from the Ward Transfer Company for resale. Faced with economic loss as a result
of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ban on resale of the toxic oil in 1979, the waste
haulers chose the cheap way out by illegally dumping it along North Carolina's roadways.
Burns and Ward were subsequently sent to jail for the criminal dumping of the tainted oil.
This dumping was the largest PCB spill ever documented in the United States. More than
30,000 gallons of PCB-laced oil was left on 210 miles ofroadway in the state for four years
before the federal EPA and the state of North Carolina began clean-up activities. In 1982, after
months of deliberations and a questionable site selection exercise, North Carolina Governor
James B. Hunt in 1982 decided to bury the contaminated soil in the community of Afton located
in Warren County. Local citizens later tagged the site "Hunt's Dump."
Local county residents did organize. They formed the Warren County Citizens Concerned
About PCBs. This time local citizens were not standing alone. Grassroots groups were joined by
national civil rights leaders, black elected officials, environmental activists, and labor leaders.
For example, Reverend Leon White of the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial
Justice, Reverends Joseph Lowery and Ben Chavis and Fred Taylor of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, District of Columbia Delegate Walter Fauntroy of the
Congressional Black Caucus, and some 500 loyal supporters were able to focus the national
limelight on the tiny black town of Afton.
The protests, however, did not stop the trucks from rolling in and dumping their loads. The state
began hauling more than 6,000 truckloads of the PCB-contaminated soil to the landfills in mid-
September of 1982. Just two weeks later, more than 414 protesters had been arrested. The
protest demonstrations in Warren County marked the first time anyone in the United
States had been iailed trying to halt a toxic waste landfill.