Document RJj19bQdOBQe1ey0YQYDGZdbE

San F'fxmci&oot CA - Sen, Francisco Bay Guardian w. 17 Jlllent P. C. B Est. 1SS8 North mington Ten, Floyd McKis-' ; sick, former leader of the Con Carolina gress On Racial Equality- (CORE) and Lois Gibbs oji PQB.protest i the Love Canal Homeownefs . Association, Jyi charges x>t , The 523 arrests make the dropped as daily demonstrations the most massive outpouring of civil disobedience | on deadly . C an environmental issue any where in the nation outside landfill H of antinuke demonstrations at Seabrook, New Hamp- begins to ; shire and Diablo Canyon. leak The demonstrations also " mark the strongest surge of activism for traditional civil Although more than 500 rights organizations in the black and white demonstra- , South since the mid-'60s. tors seeking to block the fil Yet the protests went largely ling of a hotly disputed PCB unreported in the national dump in North Carolina media. / ;: have been arrested oyer the At issue in Warren Coun past two months, the misde ty is a 120-acre landfill -- meanor charges have now "the Cadillac of landfills," been overturned by a local according to North Caro Warren County judge. ; lina Governor Jim Hunt -- On Nov. 1st and 2nd, : constructed by the state to Circuit Court Justice Norris receive 45,000 tons of soil Reed dismissed four differ- , contaminated by PCB ent impeding traffic charges transformer oil spread along against. Ken Ferrucio, a 243 miles of, Carolina high leader of Warren County way by midnight dumpers Citizens Against PCBs,' on . in July 1978.' , Charging that . .the technical grounds that the governor had selected the flow of regular traffic the rural site at Afton for on an access road leading disposal because the county .. to the rural dump had al is over 60% black, demon ready been impeded by the strators began in mid-Sep- / presence of 70 North Caro tember to sit down daily. lina state troopers. on Access Road .1604 in Dismissal of 500 arrest a vain effort to block truck citations against Warren convoys from filling a spe- County citizens and their dally designated _40-acre supporters followed in short PCB plot. Locals partici order. Among those ar pating in the. protests were rested during the demon- , equally fearful the. state strations were Joseph Low would use the surrounding ery, head of the Southern landfill acreage to- deepsix Christian Leadership Confe other toxic chemicals. rence, Congressional Black "Do anything to stop the Caucus Chairman Rep. Wal dumping," Lois Gibbs told ter Fauntroy, the Rever a gathering in September, end Ben Chavis of the Wil just before the first arrests were made by riot-equipped state troopers. "You have an opportunity that I never had at Love Canal. You have an ability to stop it," she said. -..... In a telephone interview with the Guardian, Ferruc cio, a local schoolteacher, charged the state is now postponing permanent cap ping of the PCB fill because heavy autumn rains have deposited nearly 700,000 gallons of contaminated water in the uncovered dis posal trenches. According to Ferruccio, the seepage threatens the town's water table. During construction of .the landfill, the Envi ronmental Protection Agen cy waived its 50-foot sep aration standard from the bottom of the waste to the ; seasonal high groundwater mark at the state's request, Ferruccio charged. Esti mates are that by mid winter,`only ten feet will separate the seeping mate rials from the water table. "It's like a sponge down there," says Ferruccio. In an effort to avoid ground water contamination, Fer ruccio/thinks the state will try to pump the seepage .into nearby Bridle Creek. . "This is just further proof that this community can- t.j>bt coexist with the dump," ^Ferruccio told the Guard ian, vowing to resume dem onstrations. --.-.-- /Warren County,, Citizens ' Against PCBs, a coalition ] staunchly backed by the area's black churches, has long charged that Governor Hunt deliberately left the. dumped PCB oils sitting on Highway 58 roadsides for four years in an effort to advertise to the nation's microelectric industry that the state was not a rigid enforcer . of prohibitions against PCB use and dis- . posal. After the 1978 dump ing by a Raleigh-based trucking company, abnor mally high PCB contents were .discovered in the breast milk of nursing mothers who lived along the contaminated highway. In 1979 the EPA banned the use in manufacturing of Polychlorinated Biphe nyls (PCB) -- a virtually indestructible' carcinogen developed 50 years ago by Monsanto as an insu lator. PCB-ARCH