Our Road: Then -- E28 "The Past is Never Past," Reflections on NPR Throughline Podcast

Photo: William Sanjour, Former Branch Chief of EPA's Division of Hazardous Waste Disposal, warned in the late 1970s that reducing the scope of Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) industrial hazardous waste disposal regulations would be devastating.  He became an EPA whistleblower, speaking out about the dangers of weak and non-existent regulations of chemicals and predicting the horrific chemical age in which we now live.

See: From the Files of a Whistleblower: Or how EPA was captured by the industry it regulated, by William Sanjour, 12.25.13
https://chej.org/wp-content/uploads/william_sanjour_memoir.pdf

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In this episode, we ask our listeners why they should continue to take their valuable time to listen to this Our Road to Walk: Then and Now  podcast series. We point out that our listeners don’t have to take our word that the Warren County, North Carolina PCB landfill history has significance to everyone who wants a safe environment and a livable planet.

The relevance of the Warren County, North Carolina PCB landfill history is affirmed in a recent October 5, 2023, National Public Radio Throughline podcast series in an episode  titled: “Two Miles Down the Road.”  This NPR podcast episode features how the Warren County PCB landfill opposition “helped birth a national movement, one that would eventually put environmental justice on the national agenda — and is shaping the fight for climate action today.” According to Throughline, “The past is never past,” and we must “go back in time to understand the present.”

This Our Road To Walk: Then and Now  podcast Episode 28 is an attempt to go deeper into the conversation about how Warren County put environmental justice on the national agenda and how the Warren County environmental justice narrative has been shaped over time by a storytelling narrative known in research circles as ethnography, a research method that relies not so much on verifying history but a method that allows flexibility in remembering history.

In this episode, Ken and Deborah go back in time to the origins and the aftermath of the Warren County PCB environmental justice movement in an effort to clarify for their listening audience the difference between ethnographic storytelling narratives and documented historical narratives. Why? 

Because, as the relevance of the Warren County PCB environmental justice movement is seen largely through a storytelling narrative lens, the focus is not so much on the documented history — on the scientific evidence and the environmental and justice truths we need to know if we are to take meaningful climate action and to create lasting, effective solutions. 

Let’s face it. Most of us would prefer to forget the unhappy parts of the past, but in the case of the chemical assault on our lives, storytelling is not enough and can actually support the polluters. As we are in “a world awash in chemicals" (1),  the public has the right and deserves to know the documented history of the PCB movement that is known for transforming environmentalism so that we can make scientifically informed choices for our environmental and public health future. 

Don’t get us wrong. Storytelling, the most ancient means of keeping history and passing it on, is legitimate and important. It’s just that we need both storytelling and documented history telling, but we need to know the difference. 

As primary sources, Ken and Deborah continue to share with their podcast listeners the Warren County, North Carolina PCB saga as a documented history they have archived and kept.


(1) Hertsgaard, Mark, “A World Awash in Chemicals,” New York Times, April 7, 1996.
       https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/07/books/a-world-awash-in-chemicals.&l