No Dumping

A PCB spill fires up a town

When the poisonous-waste landfill near the hamlet of Afton opened in September, concerned residents of Warren County, located in a poor, mostly black area of North Carolina, started staging a daily vigil. The campaign: to turn away the yellow state trucks that have been hauling in 40,000 cu. ft. of soil contaminated with toxic chemicals called PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). Six weeks and 523 arrests later, the standoff on State Road 1604 has potentially turned into the nation's most significant protest against a local government's selection of a toxic-waste site in recent memory.

The county government's troubles started in July 1978, when a malodorous, oily substance began oozing along the edge of State Highway 58. The substance was oil contaminated with PCBs, then commonly used as coolants in electrical transformers. Investigators found that 35,000 gal. of PCBs had deliberately been dropped at night along 210 miles of the highway in 14 North Carolina counties. The culprits, later arrested, were three truck drivers under contract to the Ward Transformer Co.

in nearby Raleigh. Residents of the rural tobacco-farming region, few of whom had ever heard of PCBS, soon received official warnings from the state to keep cows from grazing and to destroy crops along the tainted roadways. Four years later, when an official toxic-waste site finally opened near Afton and the dumping began, demonstrations erupted. As word of the protest spread nationwide, such civil rights leaders as District of Columbia Delegate Walter E.

Fauntroy and Southern Christian Leadership Conference President Joseph Lowery flocked to preach at rallies, school the protesters in passive resistance and go to jail with them.

In addition to health concerns, the protesters raised larger questions about discrimination in the selection of communities to be graveyards for society's poisons. Says Afton Schoolteacher Kenneth Ferruccio:

"The temptation will be, when you have a 'good site' in a rich and powerful community, to look for the politically possible. The safety question is inseparable from the question of human rights."

State officials vehemently deny that Afton was selected for political reasons. Governor James B. Hunt points out that the state tapped Afton as the spot for its first toxic-waste dump only after an exhaustive examination of 99 alternative sites. Hunt says that the site, which is now surrounded by a 120-acre buffer area and will soon be topped with 5 ft. of clay, was chosen not only because it is geologically suitable and sparsely populated but also because a substantial amount of the spilled contaminant was already inside the county. The U.S.

Government banned the manufacture of PCBS, suspected of causing cancer, in 1979.

There are ten federally approved dumping sites in the U.S., and the amount of hazardous waste produced annually amounts to 40 million tons. Warren County residents will hear the state's experts testify about the landfill's safety this week, and the arrested demonstrators are scheduled to come to court on misdemeanor charges of impeding traffic. They have clearly raised an issue that will not be easy to solve. -

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