Warren County PCB Landfill

Warren County PCB Landfill was a PCB landfill located in Warren County, NC near the community of Afton south of Warrenton, NC.

Overview

The landfill was created in 1982 by the State of North Carolina as a place to dump contaminated soil as result of an illegal PCB dumping incident. The site, which is about 150 acres, was extremely controversial and led to years of lawsuits.

Purpose

Between June and August 1978 a contractor working for Ward Transformer Company of Raleigh, North Carolina dumped over 30,000 gallons of PCB contaminated oil along 210 miles of highway in 14 counties in central and eastern North Carolina. The contractor, Robert J. Burns of Jamestown, New York, was supposed to take the oil to a facility to be recycled. Instead, faced with losing money because of EPA guidelines, the oil was sprayed along mainly rural highways at night. Burns and two other men were arrested and sent to prison for their part in the dumping. Buck Ward, the owner of Ward Transformer, also, was sent to prison for a short time for his involvement in the deal. The Ward Transformer site would later go onto the EPA Superfund cleanup list and be the primary polluter of Lake Crabtree in Raleigh, NC.

Faced with an environmental nightmare, the state, under the direction of then-Governor Jim Hunt, established the landfill in a site in rural Warren County about 60 miles northeast of Raleigh. Nearly 60,000 tons of contaminated soil were eventually deposited in the landfill.

Controversy

From the inception of the site the landfill was filled with controversy. The landfill was located in rural Warren County, which was primarily African American. The state felt that the site was the best choice at the time and would be suitable for long term storage with environmental engineering. Governor Hunt promised that when technology became available, the state would clean up the facility and make the site safer. The people of Warren County felt that the dump was placed in the county because of the large number of African Americans and because the county was one of the poorest in the state. Protests began immediately and many rallied to have the dump blocked, many even lying in the road to block Department of Transportation dump trucks from bringing the contaminated soil in. Multiple sites were evaluated for a landfill at the time. Environmental officials have even admitted that the Warren County site was not the best place to put the landfill because of hydrological reasonsFact|date=December 2007. The site became the focus of environmental racism and has led to more focus on this previously untouched subject.

Decontamination

In 1993, the seal that kept the PCB's and the contaminated soil quarantined from the rest of the ground began to fail. Residents began complaining to the state and to Governor Jim Hunt, who had been elected for a third term in 1992 (his first two terms being 1977-1985). Realizing that the site would eventually contaminate drinking water and the fact that the site needed to be cleaned up, the state decided to have the site decontaminated. It wasn't until 2001 that a contractor was hired by the state and that decontamination began. A thermal absorption process was used, which involved burning the soil in a special kiln that superheated the soil and burned the oil out of the soil. Decontamination was completed in 2004.

References

*http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/warren%20county%20rdb.htm
*http://www.wasteinfo.com/news/stories/archives/2001/07/SO/S01752.htm
* [http://www.vancnews.com/articles/2007/02/23/warrenton/news/news05.txt New book highlights county's role in EJ movement]