Our Road: Then & Now -- E33: Ken's 19-Day Fast in Jail: PCB Landfill Abysmal Failure

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In 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 Excellence,” preferably on the PCB brownfield site, or somewhere else in the county if not there. 

In fact, the PCB history has been “leveraged” as a government-sponsored narrative since Ken’s March, 1983, nineteen-day fast in jail when the state-of-the-art EPA-approved  PCB landfill was an abysmal failure within months. 

Ken’s jailhouse statement: “Why I am in Jail, Refusing to Cooperate with the Government, and Fasting” and his legal “Statement for Defense” detail why he took such drastic measures to call attention to the environmental injustice of a landfill that was a poisonous mess from day one. 

As significant EPA environmental justice grant monies promise to bury the truth of the failed PCB landfill in a feel-good, government-sponsored narrative that threatens to destroy more poor and often minority communities, Ken and Deborah speak out as never before.