Our Road to Walk: Then and Now
Our Road to Walk: Then and Now is a podcast series hosted by Deborah and Ken Ferruccio broadcast from Warren County, North Carolina, known as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement. The purpose of the series is to share the inside, untold, documented, forty-four-year PCB landfill history which serves as a roadmap and guidebook for communities everywhere who want to actively help protect the environment, especially marginalized communities, through education and activism based on science for the people. Our goal is to raise the consciousness of our listeners by informing and inspiring them and by winning their hearts and minds so that they want to join Our Road to Walk on a mutual pilgrimage for the planet, person by person, community by community, region by region, and nation by nation.
Episodes
40 episodes
Episode 39: Ferruccios’ Interview with WUNC NPR Radio Host Frank Stasio
Ken and Deborah begin this episode with an update on the status of the Warren County Environmental Action Team's proposal for a partnership with county officials to seek EPA Justice40 community grant funds for an environmental justice cente...
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9:39
Our Road: Then and Now — E38: PCB Legacy: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction
In this episode, Ken and Deborah continue to address the re-narration of the PCB history as they contradistinguish fact from fiction. They explain how the PCB landfill legacy is relevant to everyone because it is part of a...
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35:45
E37 - Our Road: Then and Now — In the Room Where It Happened
Photo Collage: EPA Public Hearing, Warren County Armory, January 4, 1979. Archives. Eight-hundred Warren County Citizens Concerned About PCBs listen intently to their independent scientist, University of Maryland soil scientist Dr. ...
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54:14
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 o...
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56:04
Our Road: Then - - 35: Environmental Justice: The Reversal and the Rift
This photo of Reverend Leon White and Ken Ferruccio, President and Spokesperson for Warren County Citizens Concerned About PCBs, was taken in December 1982, soon after the PCB protest movement as they spoke to audiences on an East Coat T...
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44:46
Our Road: Now -- E34: The EPA's Environmental Justice Emperor Has No Clothes
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Than Viet “argues that the way nations remember and re-narrate their pasts isn’t random or coincidental. It’s intentionally curated in memories, monuments, museums, even in key-chains and mugs in gift shops...
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28:39
Our Road: Then & Now -- E33: Ken's 19-Day Fast in Jail: PCB Landfill Abysmal Failure
In this episode, Ken and Deborah take off their gloves as the chemical war of words rages and is playing out in Warren County as a winner-takes-all battle for the PCB environmental justice narrative.Currently, the Warren County Environm...
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40:52
Our Road: Then -- E32: The Dastardly Deed: What Was Behind the PCB Crime?
The above photo of T. Mitchell Langdon, a Johnston County, North Carolina farmer, was published in Newsweek magazine on September 6, 1982, with an article titled "Toxic Time Bomb." The photo was taken in 1979 by Fayetteville ...
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41:36
Our Road: Then -- E31: 1980: A Landmark Victory for Polluters -- Only the NIMBYs Stand in the Way
Photo: At his parent’s home in New Hampshire, Ken works on his manuscript titled: Toxic Aggression, Fighting on the Front Lines: The North Carolina PCB Story (October, 1980). In this episode, Ken and Deborah c...
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35:45
Our Road: Then -- E30: 45th Anniversary: The Grassroots Uprising that Birthed the Warren Co. Environmental Justice Movement:
In this late December, 2023, Podcast Episode 30, Deborah and Ken break from their chronological narrative in order to recognize and celebrate the 45th anniversary of the actual birth of the Warren County environmental justice movement. They fol...
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21:58
Our Road: Then -- E29: PCB Issues and Gubernatorial Candidates' Response
In this episode, the Warrenton Rotary Club invites Ken to speak about the PCB problem. Citizens are really concerned about Warren County becoming a PCB and toxic waste dumping grounds. Ken presents his analysis titled: “PCBs: Issues Without Ans...
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28:08
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 ...
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45:00
Our Road: Then -- E27: Straight from the Horse's Mouth: An Interview with Waste Management, Inc.
This episode continues to follow the first year of the Warren County, North Carolina PCB landfill opposition and the making of the environmental justice movement that is taking place in 1979. The local narrative is very much a national EPA narr...
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39:37
Our Road: Then -- E26: Sanjour Blows the Whistle on the EPA Chemical Name-Game
Photo: Screenshot of EPA Whistleblower William Sanjour, “They Blew the Whistle at Work Then Paid the Price,” Phil Donahue Television Show, February 28, 1996. Video Archives, YouTube.In this episode, Ken and Debora...
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26:09
Our Road: Then -- E25: The Alleged Soul City-Afton Dump Connection
In this episode, Ken and Deborah receive alarming information from two reliable inside sources about a connection in the planning stages between Soul City and the proposed Afton PCB landfill site. Ken shares the information concerning the conne...
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21:03
Our Road: Then -- E24: In-Good-Faith Double-Cross
Photo: Secretary of Crime Control and Public Safety Herbert Hyde: Was he "in good faith?"On the heels of threats to Ken’s life and the break-in at the Ferruccio cabin,Ken ex...
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23:37
Our Road: Then -- E23: EPA Approves Warren Co. PCB Landfill, Ferruccio Cabin Break-in, "Anti-PCB Leader Warns He's Armed"
For once, the EPA uses the precautionary principle — something the Agency seldom applies to its decisions. Since January, 1979, the Hunt Administration has been looking to delay the EPA’s decision on the PCB landfill in Warren County and has be...
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21:31
Our Road: Then -- E22: House Bill 290 Preempts Environmental Civil Rights & "PCB Cleanup Hunt's Folly"
What should have been a slam dunk by the Hunt Administration to bury the roadside PCBs in Warren County by March or April of 1979, weather permitting, has been anything but that. Apparently, Governor Hunt had been so confident that he would bur...
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22:53
Our Road: Then -- E 21: Johnston County Gas Mask Protest and More
In this episode, Ken goes to Johnston County with Wallace Neal in the PCB truck to protest the state’s testing of the Weber plan to see if carbon can be used to treat the roadside PCBs in place. However, it is highly unlikely that the EPA will ...
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32:32
Our Road: Then -- E 20: Aggravated Citizens Meet With EPA Part 2
In this episode, the meeting with Warren County Citizens Concerned About PCBs delegates and EPA Office of Toxic Substances officials continues. Delegates discuss EPA’s hazardous waste disposal regulations and express their...
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32:03
Our Road: Then -- E19: 50 - 5' -- Honest Science for the People is a Threat to the State
In this episode, a delegation of Warren County Citizens Concerned About PCBs meets with EPA officials to find out if the rumor is true that the EPA is going to drop the 50 foot required distance between the bottom of a toxic waste landfill ...
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29:22
Our Road: Then -- E18 The Hand That Rocks a Cradle Can Also Make a Fist
In this episode we are returning to our Warren County PCB landfill narrative as the history is unfolding in January and February, 1979. Why should our listeners care about what happened forty-four years ago? Because the Warren County PCB landfi...
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28:27
Our Road: Now -- EP 17: Rome is Burning, and EPA Lit the Fires
Nearly two-thousand years ago, the Emperor Nero played music and partied as he watched 70% of Rome burn to the ground. Today, we are metaphorically watching Rome burn as our environment and health are assaulted again and again by pollution from...
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33:50
Our Road: Now -- E16 East Palestine, Ohio Chemical Disaster: A Wake-Up Call
In this episode, we’re pausing our historical narrative of the Warren County PCB history to focus on the horrific February 3, 2023 Norfolk Southern Railroad train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Eleven train cars spilled 115,580 g...
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21:35
Our Road: Then -- E15: Unreasonable Risk: A Warren County Delegation to Governor Hunt --Part 2
On January 18, 1979, we recorded and later transcribed our meeting with Governor Hunt. This episode is based on the transcript of that recording.In this Part 2 of the Warren County delegation to Governor Hunt, Warren representati...
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28:46
