Our Road: Then -- E9: EPA Public Hearing: State Makes Its PCB Landfill Case, EPA Defends It

Our Road to Walk: Then and Now

Warren 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 to EPA Region IV Administrator John White, who is in charge of approving the PCB plans. 700 seats are filled with citizens, and those left standing crowd at the back and along side walls.
Warrenton's WVSP Radio Host Jim Lee is broadcasting the hearing live. Before the hearing begins, he shares with his listening audience a detailed synopsis of PCB-related events that began with the roadside midnight PCB dumpings the summer before. Ken and Deborah transcribed this and other WVSP recordings of key PCB events and are thus able to share the exact words of state and EPA officials as well as of Warren County citizens.
What drove so many people, at such short notice, on such a frigid night, just after the holidays to attend this public hearing that lasted from 7:00 pm until 2:30 am because ninety-two citizens signed up to speak?
First, it was Governor Hunt’s NC Assistant Secretary of Crime Control and Public Safety David Kelly’s incendiary statement that public sentiment would not deter the state from buying land and constructing a PCB landfill in Afton, Warren County.
Next, it was Warren County Citizens Spokesperson Ken Ferruccio who delivered the people’s bottom line: “due process first, then civil disobedience.”
Then came the news that the Governor’s plane had just flown Warren County officials to tour an EPA-approved hazardous waste landfill facility in Alabama owned by Waste Management, Inc. Citizens had just learned the giant waste disposal company had purchased an option on 500 acres of land in Warren County for a multi-state hazardous waste landfill facility on property in Warren County owned by Governor Hunt’s campaign manager.
The million-dollar questions citizens are asking themselves are, "Will the state's PCB plans be safe? What is the underlying intention for the PCB landfill, for the 500-acre interstate hazardous landfill, and for industrial development in North Carolina? Is Warren County slated to be a hazardous waste center, a chemical waste landfill nexus to attract chemical-producing industries wanting cheap and convenient dumping grounds?"
In this Part 1 episode of the EPA Public Hearing, three state officials testify to the alleged safety of the state’s PCB landfill plans and claim that the Afton site is the best site possible in the state, even as the state is requesting waivers for three of five important regulations.
EPA Official Jim Scarborough shows a slide presentation of the Alabama hazardous waste facility and emphasizes the pervasive need for hazardous chemical waste landfills in order to contain the waste generated during production, as well as a need for a landfill for the PCBs spewed along 240 miles of roadsides in 14 North Carolina counties and at Ft. Bragg.
Scarborough’s description of how landfills work is illogical and unsettling, and citizens see that the EPA seems to be more like an executioner than an impartial judge.
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