Send us a text

Ken 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 sustainability programs such as at Wake Forest University are attempting to prepare students to become sustainability leaders who will help address the daunting challenges of climate change.

Deborah and Ken decide it will be helpful to share a representative slice of this long history by following the immediate 15-day timeline for their grassroots opposition to the PCB landfill. By chronicling the fast-thinking and fast-acting of Warren County citizens in this extraordinary compressed fifteen-day period, Deborah and Ken share how ordinary citizens take extraordinary measures that will become a model for pollution prevention and sustainability.

Send us a text

Above 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 the same tradition . . . . an introduction to Warren County friends, Laura Bennie and Charlie Davis . . . . an unforgettable day riding horses in the surf . . . . a powerful Atlantic storm that demolishes their tents and directs the Ferruccio course inland to Warren County, a place they would have never, ever thought of on their own to call home.

There, in a log cabin at the end of a mile-long farm road, Deborah and Ken see the opportunity to live the simple, back-to-the-land, rural life they have been looking for. They get to know people from all walks of life who take them in with a neighborly welcome, homegrown garden meals, seasoned Southern story-telling, and back porch music.

Ocracoke is not only a mystical starting point for Deborah and Ken. The island is where they return because it’s the place that helps them assess and reassess the direction of their lives. As Ken puts it in a 1980 preface, "Ocracoke is a navigational center from which to guide our course through the dangerous shoals ahead.”

Ken is, of course, obliquely referring to the dangers posed by the PCB landfill that threatens Warren County.

Send us a text

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.”