The Intersection of Environmentalism and the Civil Rights Movement
By the summer of 1982, the three-year legal battle led by the predominantly
white Warren County Citizens Concerned about PCBs group had run its course and the arrival of the dump trucks loomed. Its leaders reached out to local Black ministers with the hope of mobilizing congregations and connecting with broader networks of civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the United
Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice (CRJ).
Local Black leaders, including Rev. Benjamin Chavis, Jr., Golden Frinks, and Rev. Leon White, brought in sympathetic national leaders such as Rev. Joseph Lowery (SCLC) and Walter E. Fauntroy (Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives for the District of Columbia and SCLC Board member).
This shift in the movement also expanded discourse, from the so-called "NIMBY" (Not In My Backyard) argument that was focused on health and economic outcomes, to inclusion of a critique of the disproportionate environmental risks faced by Black and Indigenous communities. The Warren County movement has been credited with defining the concept of environmental racism.
Epilogue
Globally and locally, environmental justice issues persist to this day. Coal ash disposal, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline cancelled in 2020, and hog farm waste generated by "confined animal feeding operations" (CAFOs) or "industrial farming operations" (IFOs) are just three examples connected to North Carolina.
Many avenues to address environmental justice issues have evolved since the Warren County PCB landfill protest. UNC and other universities now offer the topic for academic study, ranging from subject minors to graduate degrees. Concerned citizens have formed organizations to tackle reallife instances. Two examples are
- The North Carolina Environmental Justice Network, founded in 1998, is a "people of color-led coalition of community organizations and their supporters who work with low-income communities and people of color on issues of climate, environmental, racial, and social injustice."
- The Warren County Environmental Action Team is a network of organizations and individuals working together to record, celebrate, and share Warren County's environmental justice legacy, natural resources and diverse cultures. Their motto is "Telling Our Story - Building Our Future."
The Warren County PCB Landfill: The Final Chapter
"The 'Cadillac of landfills' is no Cadillac."
— Deborah Ferruccio, May 1983
The initial efforts of the people of Warren County failed to prevent the placement of a landfill holding 81,000 tons of PCB-contaminated soil in their county. But the perseverance of the citizens, local supporters, and civil rights activists won them a place at the decision-making table and allowed them to steer Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., and the state legislature toward the goal of totally detoxifying the Warren County PCB landfill in place.
In 1982, Governor Hunt pledged in a letter to Warren County citizens that "The state will push as hard as it can for detoxification of the landfill when and if the appropriate and feasible technology is developed." In May 1993, state officials announced the bottom of the landfill contained nearly 1,000,000 gallons of water, about thirteen feet deep—entrapped rainwater that fell heavily during its construction. Ensuing investigations discovered that the landfill was seriously flawed.
In March 1994, Hunt established the Citizens/State Joint Warren County PCB Landfill Working Group, which included nine Warren County citizens who continually pushed detoxification forward. In 1997, the EPA cited the state for noncompliance of the landfill's regulations, forcing the state to act. It took several more years to secure funding to detoxify the landfill.
Between 2002 and 2004, the state hired a firm to detoxify the landfill's soil using the Base Catalyzed Decomposition process, which pulled PCB molecules off soil particles, dissolved them in a specialized oil, and rendered them much less toxic. The state shipped the resulting 4,500 gallons of oil to Kansas for incineration. Work crews returned the detoxified soil into the onsite pit, then graded the land and seeded it with grass. This process realized an early goal of the protesters to not pass off their problem to someone else.