Our Road: Then & Now -- E36 How the Rift Was Won

Episode Photo: For this hard-hitting episode, we chose to feature this quote by Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Montgomery, Alabama, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, because we agree with him that "an honest engagement with our past is essential if we are to create a healthy and just future."

In this episode, Ken and Deborah continue to respond to EPA’s Senior Environmental Justice Policy Advisor Dr. Charles Lee’s invitation to Ken to share his ideas — past, present, and future — as part of a “We Birthed the Movement” panel discussion.

They follow where the last episode left off, explaining more about the reversal of the Warren County environmental justice movement, especially as it plays out in the detoxification cleanup process of the PCB landfill. 

It’s important to know how and why this reversal in the birthplace occurred because the PCB cleanup process has informed the perceptions of the environmental justice movement at large.

Ken and Deborah share excerpts from a revealing, December, 1998 inside letter from PCB Working Group member Jim Warren, who was and still is Director of NC WARN, the North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, to Co-chair Dollie Burwell. The letter follows how the original citizen/state agreed-upon goal of the PCB Working Group — to detoxify the landfill with qualified independent scientific oversight — is reversed, using subterfuge to create a rift in the PCB Working Group.

They remind Dr. Lee of the 1994 statement he wrote on behalf of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice in support of detoxification of the PCB landfill with stakeholder decision-making and independent science. They then ask Dr. Lee if he was aware of Jim Warren’s letter concerning the rift in the PCB Working Group.

As they speak to present concerns, Ken and Deborah, address potential allocation of EPA Justice40 community grant funding, especially as it relates to the Warren County Environmental Action Team that has proposed a partnership with the Warren County Board of Commissioners in order to build an EPA-sponsored Warren County-based environmental justice grassroots leadership center of excellence in the county. 

Ken and Deborah point out that members of the Action Team have clear governmental and institutional-affiliated conflicts of interest that are antithetical to grassroots citizen interests and that members of the Action Team are not experientially qualified to “develop and implement a grassroots leadership training model based on the PCB landfill struggle,” as Action Team Director Bill Kearney has stated is the objective. 

Concerning the vision for the future of Warren County, Ken adamantly makes his point clear: 

“An EPA institutional nexus of entangling alliances with the Warren County Environmental Action Team, in partnership with Warren County Commissioners, or any other entity, will not determine the future of Warren County, but the public sentiment of Warren County Citizens — landowners, tax payers, stake-holders —will determine the future of Warren County.”

Ken and Deborah end the episode with this question to EPA’s Charles Lee: 

“Would you, Charles, consider coming to Warren County, joining Warren County Environmental Action Team Director Bill Kearney, and sitting down with the citizens of the county as we discuss our visions for Warren County and beyond going forward, as well as, if and how, proposed EPA Justice40 grant monies might best be allocated?”