Shows
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then —EP46: PCB Dead Sea Scrolls: Seven Personal JournalsSend us a textPhoto: A stack of Deborah’s journals spanning from 1977 — 1982 taken from the Ferruccio’s Warren County PCB Dead Sea Scrolls. ________________________________________________________________________________________________In this Our Road to Walk: Then and Now podcast series, Deborah and Ken continue to examine the past in the context of the present. In their last episode, they focused on the current climate crisis and the petrochemical take-over. In this episode, they go back in their PCB Dead Sea Scrolls archives to a collection of 1982 documents that Deborah has found stuck in the last of a sta...2025-07-0238 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road — Now: EP 45 The Petrochemical Industry Take Over: An All Hands on Deck MomentSend us a textScreenshot photo: Vice-President Al Gore speaking at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, Opening Reception of Climate Week, April 21, 2025 (ABC7 News Bay Area). _____________________________________________________________________________________________In this episode, Ken and Deborah explain why this podcast has been such a long time coming. As with many Americans, they've been busy keeping up with the current administration’s daily assault on democracy, with more than one-hundred-fifty executive orders so far, including day one’s declaration of a “state of energy emergency,” with plans to lift the “burden” of regulations on the fossil fuels and to open up al...2025-05-2944 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road — Then — EP 44: Extraordinary People, Extraordinary TimesSend us a textKen and Deborah were recently asked by Michael Lamphier, Executive Director of the Wake Forest University School of Business, if they will speak to a class he is taking called “Communication and Conflict.” The class is part of the Master of Arts Sustainability Program at Wake Forest University. Michael then asked them if they would share their Warren County PCB history with the class, especially focusing on how the history began, what part did communication play in the conflict, and what are the lasting impacts. He knows how susta...2025-04-0642 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then — EP 43 That Latest Yankee Invasion: Our Move from North to SouthSend us a textAbove Photo: “Making Music,” Left: Sylvia Davis Bumgardner, Robert Ferruccio, Ken Ferruccio, Robert Macon Davis (harmonica), Deborah Ferruccio (harmonica), Charlie Davis (guitar), Laura Bennie Davis, pregnant with daughter, Mariah, born the next day, July 4, 1977. (Photo by Stan Bumgardner) ______________________________________________________________ In this episode, Deborah and Ken share with their listeners the answer to questions folks often ask them: “What bought you to Warren County, and what has kept you?”They share chance encounters that seem more than accidental . . . . a family camping tradition carried on at Ocracoke Island . . . . a convergence of North Carolina teachers with...2025-02-2132 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then — EP 42: How long? Not long. Ferruccio’s 5-Point Detoxification FrameworkSend us a textIn this episode, Ken echoes Dr. King’s notable “How, Long? Not Long" question and refrain in a memorandum to Jonathan Howes, Secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources that outlines Ken's 5-point framework for detoxifying the Warren County PCB landfill based on conditions necessary to environmental justice.Three days earlier, the Secretary has announced that up to a million gallons of water is in the PCB landfill and is threatening to breach the bottom liner. However, after ten years of silence, the question is, why...2025-02-0152 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road Then — EP41 The Lickskillet Landfill: “It Takes Rosa Parks and Puts Her on the Back of the Bus Once Again"Send us a textAbove Photo: “Warren Residents Oppose Regional Landfill," front-page, Henderson Daily Dispatch,” by Scott Ragland, March 19, 1992. Inset reads: “It takes Rosa Parks and puts her on the back of the bus once again.” Ken Ferruccio______________________________________________________________________________________________If we’re looking for social change leaders to stem the tide of climate change, ordinary citizens must, as Princeton University professor and author Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., puts it, “be the leaders we have been looking for.”In this episode, Deborah and Ken feature the legacy of such homegrown leaders in the early 1990s, as...2025-01-0144 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then and Now — EP40: HIJACKED! Historic PCB Marker, 30th AnniversarySend us a textAbove Photo: Bill Kearney and Dollie Burwell unveil the PCB historic marker at the September 15, 2012 30th anniversary PCB celebration held at Coley Springs Baptist Church, (Henderson Daily Dispatch, Earl King)In this episode, it comes as no real surprise to Ken and Deborah that soon after the North Carolina Public Radio interview they did with “The State of Things,” the local Warren County government is facilitating efforts to plan the 2012, 30th anniversary celebration of the 1982 PCB protest movement. Leading the efforts is Bill Kearney and his newly formed Warren County Environmental Actio...2024-12-0652 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowEpisode 39: Ferruccios’ Interview with WUNC NPR Radio Host Frank StasioSend us a textKen and Deborah begin this episode with an update on the status of the Warren County Environmental Action Team's proposal for a partnership with county officials to seek EPA Justice40 community grant funds for an environmental justice center in the county based on the PCB legacy. With EPA grant funding deadlines nearing and with no public engagement in the grant decision-making process, it seems that the Action Team may have decided to dismiss attempts to partner with the county.Deborah shares excerpts from an October 16, 2024 letter to the W...2024-11-0609 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then and Now — E38: PCB Legacy: Distinguishing Fact from FictionSend us a textIn this episode, Ken and Deborah continue to address the re-narration of the PCB history as they contradistinguish fact from fiction. They explain how the PCB landfill legacy is relevant to everyone because it is part of a crucial turning point for the nation, a watershed that has set precedents which continue to affect economic development, environmental protection standards, and environmental civil rights policies.They fact-check statements in the recent PCB film titled: “Our Movement Starts Here” and give detailed context to back their positions. Ken and Deb...2024-10-2335 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowE37 - Our Road: Then and Now — In the Room Where It HappenedSend us a textPhoto Collage: EPA Public Hearing, Warren County Armory, January 4, 1979. Archives. Eight-hundred Warren County Citizens Concerned About PCBs listen intently to their independent scientist, University of Maryland soil scientist Dr. Charles Mulchi. _________________________________________________________________________________________ In the Room Where it Happened In this episode, Ken and Deborah continue to tie past PCB history to the present as they take their listeners to “to the room where it happened,” to the Warren County National Guard Armory where the PCB landfill environmental justice movement began on a frigid January 4, 1979 night when some 800 citizens voiced their sentiment against a t...2024-09-2254 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then & Now -- E36 How the Rift Was WonSend us a textEpisode Photo: For this hard-hitting episode, we chose to feature this quote by Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Montgomery, Alabama, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, because we agree with him that "an honest engagement with our past is essential if we are to create a healthy and just future."In this episode, Ken and Deborah continue to respond to EPA’s Senior Environmental Justice Policy Advisor Dr. Charles Lee’s invitation to Ken to share his ideas — past, present, and future — as part of a “We Birthed the Movement” panel discus...2024-07-1456 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then - - 35: Environmental Justice: The Reversal and the RiftSend us a textThis photo of Reverend Leon White and Ken Ferruccio, President and Spokesperson for Warren County Citizens Concerned About PCBs, was taken in December 1982, soon after the PCB protest movement as they spoke to audiences on an East Coat Tour organized by Charles Lee and sponsored by the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice.In this episode, Ken responds to a recent invitation from Dr. Charles Lee to serve as a panelist and to share his PCB experiences and insights at a “We Birthed the Movement” discussion host...2024-07-0744 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Now -- E34: The EPA's Environmental Justice Emperor Has No ClothesSend us a textPulitzer Prize-winning author Than Viet “argues that the way nations remember and re-narrate their pasts isn’t random or coincidental. It’s intentionally curated in memories, monuments, museums, even in key-chains and mugs in gift shops.” He calls this the “re-narration memory industry.” In other words, they change history.In this episode, Ken and Deborah examine how the EPA’s environmental justice re-memory industry has and continues to re-narrate the Warren County environmental justice PCB narrative through the use of manipulated language and the efforts of the Warren County Environm...2024-05-0628 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then & Now -- E33: Ken's 19-Day Fast in Jail: PCB Landfill Abysmal FailureSend us a textIn this episode, Ken and Deborah take off their gloves as the chemical war of words rages and is playing out in Warren County as a winner-takes-all battle for the PCB environmental justice narrative.Currently, the Warren County Environmental Action Team — which includes local, state, federal, EPA and academic-affiliated members, seeks to partner with county commissioners to secure EPA Justice40 community grant monies in order “to leverage the PCB environmental justice history and the county’s close relationship with the leadership of the EPA” and to “build an Environmental Justice Center of Excelle...2024-04-0640 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E32: The Dastardly Deed: What Was Behind the PCB Crime?Send us a textThe above photo of T. Mitchell Langdon, a Johnston County, North Carolina farmer, was published in Newsweek magazine on September 6, 1982, with an article titled "Toxic Time Bomb." The photo was taken in 1979 by Fayetteville Observer reporter James L. Pate, Jr.In this episode, Deborah and Ken are focusing more closely on what could have been behind the 1978 North Carolina PCB roadside crime, what Governor Hunt called the “dastardly deed.”State officials maintained the PCB dumpers were attempting to avoid the costs of new hazardous waste rules under the Toxic...2024-02-1641 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E31: 1980: A Landmark Victory for Polluters -- Only the NIMBYs Stand in the WaySend us a textPhoto: At his parent’s home in New Hampshire, Ken works on his manuscript titled: Toxic Aggression, Fighting on the Front Lines: The North Carolina PCB Story (October, 1980). In this episode, Ken and Deborah continue to share with their listeners the events of 1980 as they relate to their PCB situation in particular and as the events relate to the larger hazardous waste issue in North Carolina and across the country. As the history is unfolding in this second year of their PCB narrative — 1980 — what is occurring with EPA haza...2024-01-2335 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E30: 45th Anniversary: The Grassroots Uprising that Birthed the Warren Co. Environmental Justice Movement:Send us a textIn this late December, 2023, Podcast Episode 30, Deborah and Ken break from their chronological narrative in order to recognize and celebrate the 45th anniversary of the actual birth of the Warren County environmental justice movement. They follow the extraordinary events that take place in Warren County in late December, 1978, and early 1979, after citizens learn the Hunt Administration plans to bury the roadsides PCBs in Warren County, regardless of their public sentiment.In this 45th anniversary episode, Ken and Deborah follow in detail how Warren County Citizens Concerned About PCBs responded to the...2023-12-2221 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E29: PCB Issues and Gubernatorial Candidates' ResponseSend us a textIn this episode, the Warrenton Rotary Club invites Ken to speak about the PCB problem. Citizens are really concerned about Warren County becoming a PCB and toxic waste dumping grounds. Ken presents his analysis titled: “PCBs: Issues Without Answers,” and Attorney Frank Banzet suggests that Ken shares his PCB analysis with the candidates running for governor. Ken then sends his analysis to the three 1980 gubernatorial candidates, including Governor Jim Hunt, former Governor Bob Scott, and I. Beverly Lake, Jr., inviting them to share their responses on what to do with the PCBs...2023-12-1528 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E28 "The Past is Never Past," Reflections on NPR Throughline PodcastSend us a textPhoto: William Sanjour, Former Branch Chief of EPA's Division of Hazardous Waste Disposal, warned in the late 1970s that reducing the scope of Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) industrial hazardous waste disposal regulations would be devastating. He became an EPA whistleblower, speaking out about the dangers of weak and non-existent regulations of chemicals and predicting the horrific chemical age in which we now live. See: From the Files of a Whistleblower: Or how EPA was captured by the industry it regulated, by William Sanjour, 12.25.13https://chej.org/w...2023-10-2745 min
ThroughlineTwo Miles Down The RoadDeborah and Ken Ferruccio saw the toxic chemical spill while they were driving home late one summer night in 1978: a big smelly swath of brown oil on the side of the road. Reverend Willie T. Ramey saw it too. He was a pastor at two local churches and a respected community leader. And not long after that highway spill, he agreed to meet the Ferruccios just after midnight in a barn in Warren County, North Carolina. The Ferruccios told Reverend Ramey they needed his help. Someone was dumping toxic waste in their county, and they needed to organize. Today on...2023-10-0555 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E27: Straight from the Horse's Mouth: An Interview with Waste Management, Inc.Send us a textThis episode continues to follow the first year of the Warren County, North Carolina PCB landfill opposition and the making of the environmental justice movement that is taking place in 1979. The local narrative is very much a national EPA narrative. PCBs in North Carolina, and EPA regulations in Washington, D.C. are the battle grounds. EPA is turning hazardous waste regulations into a license to pollute, and the battle is for uncorrupted science. Warren County citizens who have the metaphorical gun to their heads in 1979 can clearly see that how things...2023-09-3039 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E26: Sanjour Blows the Whistle on the EPA Chemical Name-GameSend us a textPhoto: Screenshot of EPA Whistleblower William Sanjour, “They Blew the Whistle at Work Then Paid the Price,” Phil Donahue Television Show, February 28, 1996. Video Archives, YouTube.In this episode, Ken and Deborah ask their listeners why they should care about the seeming web of toxic waste relationships taking place back in the summer and fall of 1979 in a backwoods part of the rural South. This episode is the answer to that question.They ask, “Why should their listeners care?”Because that web of relationships in 1979 w...2023-09-1226 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E25: The Alleged Soul City-Afton Dump ConnectionSend us a textIn this episode, Ken and Deborah receive alarming information from two reliable inside sources about a connection in the planning stages between Soul City and the proposed Afton PCB landfill site. Ken shares the information concerning the connection with Concerned Citizens committee members who advise him that he needs to share the information with the public through the news media. In addition to waste generated by industrial production at Soul City, other waste would be shipped to Soul City by rail. The sources said that near the rail head, which was...2023-08-2321 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E24: In-Good-Faith Double-CrossSend us a textPhoto: Secretary of Crime Control and Public Safety Herbert Hyde: Was he "in good faith?"On the heels of threats to Ken’s life and the break-in at the Ferruccio cabin,Ken examines his contradictory leadership position as a proponent of non-violent civil disobedience who felt it necessary to protect himself and Deborah with arms. In the aftermath of the statewide publicity about the “Anti-PCB Leader in a State of Armed Alert,” the Hunt Administration proposes the multiple-dump option. Seven of the fourteen counties agree to let the state test...2023-08-1523 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E23: EPA Approves Warren Co. PCB Landfill, Ferruccio Cabin Break-in, "Anti-PCB Leader Warns He's Armed"Send us a textFor once, the EPA uses the precautionary principle — something the Agency seldom applies to its decisions. Since January, 1979, the Hunt Administration has been looking to delay the EPA’s decision on the PCB landfill in Warren County and has been pretending to seriously consider the in-place carbon treatment of the roadside PCBs. Then the Agency decides to require a 50-year study of PCBs treated in-place with carbon.It comes as no real surprise, then, on June 4, 1979, that Ken receives a phone call from Raleigh radio station WRAL FM asking him to comm...2023-08-0621 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowE23- Then: EPA Approves Warren Co. PCB Landfill; Ferruccio Cabin Break-in, Anti-PCB Leader Warns He's ArmedFor once, the EPA uses the precautionary principle — something the Agency seldom applies to its decisions. Since February, 1979, the Hunt Administration has been looking to delay the EPA’s decision on the PCB landfill in Warren County and has been pretending to seriously consider the in-place carbon treatment of the roadside PCBs. Then the Agency decides to require a 50-year study of PCBs treated in-place with carbon. Such a longitudinal study of a chemical was and still is unheard of and at the time was the EPA’s way of shutting down for good any more consideration of treati...2023-08-0622 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E22: House Bill 290 Preempts Environmental Civil Rights & "PCB Cleanup Hunt's Folly"Send us a textWhat should have been a slam dunk by the Hunt Administration to bury the roadside PCBs in Warren County by March or April of 1979, weather permitting, has been anything but that. Apparently, Governor Hunt had been so confident that he would bury the PCBs in Warren County, that he warned citizens there that public sentiment would not deter the state from burying the PCBs in Warren County. His strong-armed warning only serves to ignite the wrath of Warren County citizens who are vehemently opposed to a PCB landfill in their county...2023-07-1822 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E 21: Johnston County Gas Mask Protest and MoreSend us a textIn this episode, Ken goes to Johnston County with Wallace Neal in the PCB truck to protest the state’s testing of the Weber plan to see if carbon can be used to treat the roadside PCBs in place. However, it is highly unlikely that the EPA will approve the carbon treatment plan which has only been studied in the lab and that will require perpetually monitoring 270 miles of highway shoulders.Ken decides to have a little fun and wears an old, military, chemical gas mask and immediately gets the attention of...2023-07-0632 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E 20: Aggravated Citizens Meet With EPA Part 2Send us a textIn this episode, the meeting with Warren County Citizens Concerned About PCBs delegates and EPA Office of Toxic Substances officials continues. Delegates discuss EPA’s hazardous waste disposal regulations and express their skepticism.They have every reason to believe that Warren County’s future is in peril. Their groundwater is at best about seven feet deep, and now the EPA is going to permit hazardous landfills to be built five feet from groundwater, even closer. The impossible claim is that new, state-of-the-art landfills will have zero percent discharge.Citizen...2023-07-0132 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E19: 50 - 5' -- Honest Science for the People is a Threat to the StateSend us a textIn this episode, a delegation of Warren County Citizens Concerned About PCBs meets with EPA officials to find out if the rumor is true that the EPA is going to drop the 50 foot required distance between the bottom of a toxic waste landfill to only 5 feet. They learn that the agency does plan to drop this regulation, and they learn much more.Throughout the meeting, delegates express their skepticism and distrust of the EPA’s toxic waste disposal landfill design. They can see that the EPA is really marketing a la...2023-06-0929 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E18 The Hand That Rocks a Cradle Can Also Make a FistSend us a textIn this episode we are returning to our Warren County PCB landfill narrative as the history is unfolding in January and February, 1979. Why should our listeners care about what happened forty-four years ago? Because the Warren County PCB landfill history is actually a history of the EPA’s war of toxic aggression, and to know this history is to understand (as EPA whistleblower William Sanjour put it) “how the EPA was captured by the industry it regulates.” The history is as relevant now as ever.As the January 25, 1979 EPA ruling on the st...2023-05-2628 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Now -- EP 17: Rome is Burning, and EPA Lit the FiresSend us a textNearly two-thousand years ago, the Emperor Nero played music and partied as he watched 70% of Rome burn to the ground. Today, we are metaphorically watching Rome burn as our environment and health are assaulted again and again by pollution from loosely-regulated petrochemical and related industries, causing communities to be poisoned, global temperatures to rise, and climate disasters to worsen.Three times in recent months, the signature black smoke of toxic chemicals on fire provided visceral reminders of how dangerous living in our chemical age can be. Three communities were evacuated; three...2023-04-2933 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Now -- E16 East Palestine, Ohio Chemical Disaster: A Wake-Up CallSend us a textIn this episode, we’re pausing our historical narrative of the Warren County PCB history to focus on the horrific February 3, 2023 Norfolk Southern Railroad train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Eleven train cars spilled 115,580 gallons of toxic vinyl chloride and other chemicals, including benzene, on the ground, and the chemicals were then deliberately burned off in order to avoid an explosion.Described as an epic disaster, the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment is a wake-up call to Americans concerning the inherent dangers of our chemical age as were Love Canal, New...2023-04-0521 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E15: Unreasonable Risk: A Warren County Delegation to Governor Hunt --Part 2Send us a textOn January 18, 1979, we recorded and later transcribed our meeting with Governor Hunt. This episode is based on the transcript of that recording.In this Part 2 of the Warren County delegation to Governor Hunt, Warren representatives continue to make their case against the PCB landfill perfectly clear to Governor Hunt.Larry Limer queries the Governor hard on the PCB landfill site selection criteria, and Henry Pitchford mentions inalienable human rights.Frances Davis asks, “Upon what basis does the state have the right to consider only the...2023-03-0428 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E14: Rev. Willie T. Ramey Electrifies the Room: A Warren County Delegation to Governor Hunt--Part 1Send us a textOn January 18, 1979, we recorded and later transcribed our meeting with Governor Hunt. This episode is based on the transcript of that recording. In this episode, Warren County Citizens send representatives to fill the nine chairs the Governor finally agreed to have. Leading the delegation, Deborah presents the 4,500 signatures of citizens who signed petitions against the landfill. She stresses the lack of criteria the state is using to base its decision that the Afton PCB landfill will not pose an “unreasonable risk” and asks what specific investigations and stu...2023-03-0321 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E13: A Game of Chairs: Negotiations for a Meeting with Governor HuntSend us a textIn our last podcast, Episode 12: Now, we fast-forwarded to the present because of recent testing at the PCB landfill conducted in conjunction with the 2022 40th anniversary of the 1982 PCB protest movement. We shared the documented evidence from four independent scientists who had studied the PCB landfill over the years and who had reported the problems and failures they had found. The take-away from Episode 12 is that there is no scientific or ethical justification for developing the contaminated PCB landfill site. Warren County has thousands of acres of land available for de...2023-02-1414 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Now -- E12: PCB Landfill Site "Open Wound" That Should Not Be DevelopedSend us a textIn this episode, we are pausing our chronological narrative of the origins of the Warren County environmental justice movement in order to address current issues related to the status of the PCB landfill site.On September 24, 2022, EPA Director Michael Regan and an entourage of EPA officials, civil rights representatives, and fence line community leaders from across the country met on the Warren County Courthouse Square to announce the EPA’s newly branded Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. Director Regan announced the new office will be funded $3 billion in ord...2023-01-2731 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E11: Jan. 4, 1979 EPA Public Hearing: The People SpeakSend us a text The Hunt Administration’s “regardless of public sentiment” statement and the threat of becoming a dumping ground for PCBs, and perhaps for an interstate hazardous waste dumping ground as well, have driven an estimated 700-800 Warren County citizens to the January 4, 1979 EPA Public Hearing held at the National Guard Armory in Warrenton, N.C. In this episode, Part 3 of the January 4, 1979 EPA Public Hearing, citizens each get five minutes to speak. They have listened to state and EPA officials’ argument about how EPA-approved landfill technology can compensate for intrinsic geological inadequacies, and they have heard...2022-12-2637 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E10 Part 2: EPA Public Hearing: Independent Scientist RespondsSend us a textIn the last episode, Part 1 of the January 4, 1979 EPA Public Hearing, our listeners hear state and EPA officials describe the conceptual engineering design of landfill technology. As officials argue that the application of this landfill design will transform the geological (soil) and hydrogeological (groundwater) inadequacies of the proposed Afton PCB site into a safe site, Warren County citizens are not buying the argument. In this episode, Part 2 of the January 4, 1979 EPA Public Hearing, University of Maryland Soil Scientist Dr. Charles Mulchi presents his assessment of the proposed A...2022-12-1417 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then - E10 Part 2: The EPA Public Hearing: The Independent Scientist RespondsIn the last episode, Part 1 of the January 4, 1979 EPA Public Hearing, our listeners hear state and EPA officials describe the conceptual engineering design of landfill technology. As officials argue that the application of this landfill design will transform the geological (soil) and hydrogeological (groundwater) inadequacies of the proposed Afton PCB site into a safe site, Warren County citizens are not buying the argument. In this episode, Part 2 of the January 4, 1979 EPA Public Hearing, University of Maryland Soil Scientist Dr. Charles Mulchi presents his assessment of the proposed Afton PCB landfill site and of the state’s PCB land...2022-12-0935 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E9: EPA Public Hearing: State Makes Its PCB Landfill Case, EPA Defends ItSend us a textWarren County Citizens Concerned About PCBs has done the unthinkable. In just two weeks, an executive committee has quickly formed an unprecedented multi-racial grassroots coalition and conducted a hard-driving education and action campaign in order to get the people to the January 4, 1979 EPA Public Hearing where it is critical for them to speak their sentiment concerning the PCB landfill.This episode takes our listeners right inside the hearing at the National Guard Armory in Warren County, North Carolina. In Part 1, the state presents its plans for the PCB landfill in Afton t...2022-12-0135 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E8: A Huge Reversal of Waste Disposal PlansSend us a text1978 is ending on an existential note for Warren County citizens. The county is under attack on two fronts — the PCB landfill in Afton and the 500-acre, multi-state hazardous waste landfill in Inez. Citizens take the dual threat seriously, and an unlikely coalition of citizens begins to form. Representatives of the Afton Gun Club, the NAACP, and the Warren County Board of Education reach out to Ken and Deborah and offer support.At the January 2, 1979 county commissioners’ meeting, members of Warren County Citizens Concerned About PCBs express their public sentiment individually agai...2022-11-2225 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E7: The Ultimatum - Second Waste AssaultSend us a textThe county is more than buzzing from the Hunt Administration’s announcement that public sentiment will not deter the state from burying the roadside PCBs in Warren County and from the time-crunch citizens are under with the EPA public hearing just days away. The steering committee meets and decides that citizens need to hire an independent soil scientist and decides to ask Dr. Charles Mulchi who is a soil scientist at the University of Maryland. He is a native of Warren County and happens to be home for the holidays. Memb...2022-11-1021 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E6: Archives, Public SentimentSend us a textKen and Deborah’s lives change forever on December 20, 1978, when they hear an announcement on Warrenton’s WVSP NPR radio station that the state plans to buy property in the Afton community of Warren County to bury PCBs that had been spewed along the roadsides of 15 counties that previous summer. Afton is the rural community where they live. They also learn that a public hearing is scheduled for two weeks later when the state will present its PCB landfill plans for EPA approval. Perhaps it is serendipity that night when Deborah...2022-10-3128 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowPublic Sentiment Won't Deter the State: Afton Citizens Respond On WVSP radio, Ken hears an announcement that is seismic. The state of North Carolina intends to bury the roadside PCBs in a landfill in Afton, Warren County, their rural community. PCB-laced oil had been spewed the previous summer along the roadsides of fifteen North Carolina counties. He learns also that the state will present its PCB landfill plan at a jointly sponsored EPA hearing on January 4, 1979, only two weeks away. With a stack of nearly a year of Margie Watson’s News & Observer newspapers that Deborah has serendipitously just picked up that night, Ken and Deborah become archivis...2022-10-2523 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E5: Connecting The Dots - The Picture UnfoldsSend us a textAlthough citizens are unaware at the time, the fall of 1978 is critical to Warren County’s future. The state manages to pick up a test-mile of roadside PCBs in the county and to temporarily store them on land owned by the Governor’s 1976 campaign manager who is also a member of the Industrial Development Commission. The foot is in the door. Governor urges community to be “mature enough, and responsible enough to take the PCBs.” In November, citizens passed a bond issue as part of a state and federally-backed regional was...2022-09-2318 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E4: The Midnight PCB Dumpings – The Making of a Public Health CrisisSend us a textIn early August, 1978, with high hopes, Ken and Deborah leave for a weekend camping trip to Bear Island, NC, but find the broiling temperature, windless air, and nearly invisible teeny carnivorous sand fleas too much. On their ride home, they encounter, mile after mile, large, yellow warning signs that read: “CAUTION PCB CHEMICAL SPILL ALONG HIGHWAY SHOULDERS.” Their tense ride home is a foreboding introduction to PCBs that will dominate the next forty-four years of their lives. As knowledge of the PCB crime begins to spread from person to person and in the...2022-09-2320 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Now -- E3: Pollution is Not Somewhere Over ThereSend us a textIn this special segment, the Ferruccio's daughter, Kyra Christina Ferruccio Ramírez, explains how she did not seek out environmental activism but learned that pollution is pervasive and comes in many forms and that we all must do our part to help make our environment(s) safer for humans and more-than-humans. She celebrates the Warren County PCB environmental justice movement but asks her listeners to consider how it came to be as well as to ponder the wider implications of this environmental history. Furthermore, she gets us to consider how policies and regulations a...2022-09-2122 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E2: 1982 Six Weeks of Civil DisobedienceSend us a textThe day was hot, but so were the people. It was September 15, 1982; the time for civil disobedience was at hand. Warren County citizens were fired up because Governor Jim Hunt was using military force to bring in the first of 10,000 truckloads of toxic PCBs to a landfill built just above the county’s groundwater. The multiracial coalition of citizens and supporters kept up their heated campaign throughout the six-week PCB rucking operation. They marched into history their human right to protect themselves from the harm caused by a toxic dumpsite doomed to fail, and...2022-09-1730 min
Our Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then -- E1: The Making of the MovementSend us a textOn December 20, 1978, Warren County, North Carolina citizens learn that the state intends to bury PCB-contaminated soil in a landfill in their county regardless of public sentiment. On behalf of citizens, Ken Ferruccio responds that there will be “due process first, then civil disobedience.” These six words are probably the first time in history that a Massachusetts Yankee speaking with a Northeastern accent, poses an ultimatum to a southern governor through the news media concerning his intention to locate a toxic waste landfill in a poor, predominantly black community. These six words would become the...2022-09-1230 minOur Road to Walk: Then and NowOur Road: Then and Now -- E0: An IntroductionSend us a textEpisode 0: Is an introduction to Our Road to Walk: Then and Now. It previews the podcast series hosted by Deborah and Ken Ferruccio and broadcast from Warren County, North Carolina, known as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement. The purpose of the series is to share the inside, untold, documented, forty-four-year PCB landfill history which serves as a roadmap and guidebook for communities everywhere who want to actively help protect the environment, especially marginalized communities, through education and activism based on science for the people. Our goal with this podcast series is to...2022-09-0906 min