Our Road: Then — EP 42: How long? Not long. Ferruccio’s 5-Point Detoxification Framework

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In 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 are state officials now bringing up the water issue?

Perhaps the Hunt Administration has been listening to the conversation Ken and Deborah have just had in Wilson County, the Governor’s own home county, about the failures and dangers of allegedly secure, lined landfills as they spoke to a poor, black community being targeted for a mega commercial solid waste landfill. Perhaps state officials have heard how the Ferruccios told Wilson citizens that with funding from the Episcopal Church, they are going to prove the PCB landfill is leaking. 

Perhaps state officials want to divert Ken and Deborah’s focus from continuing to build a coalition of ecumenical and environmental leaders to help prevent North Carolina from becoming an East Coast dumping grounds for solid, hazardous and radioactive waste.

Perhaps a PCB landfill water crisis and a stop-gap, drawn-out pumping solution will keep the Ferruccios busy at home. 

The year is 1993, and Governor Hunt is now in his third term in office. His record speaks for itself. He is well-known as a waste expansionist who will use police force against his own citizens. Ken knows this better than anyone. In his memorandum to Secretary Howes, Ken writes: “We are deeply disturbed about the PCB crisis here and about the trends this crisis represents throughout our state, our nation, and our world. The Afton crisis symbolizes the prevailing model for economic/industrial development: the model for waste expansion and inequity,  a model that transforms communities into sacrifice zones and preempts their civil rights.”

Taking his gloves off, Ken reminds the Secretary that “members of three races, blacks, whites, and Native Americans carried a cross here and were sacrificed in defense of principles universal to all people, places, and times — to all races, colors, classes and creed’ and that “everything concerning landfill siting since 1982 will be a footnote to Warren C   ounty.”