Our Road to Walk: Then and Now

Send us Fan Mail Article and photo by Luci Weldon, Warren Record assistant editor and photographer. Above WR Photo: Deborah Ferruccio asks zoning consultant Jake Petrosky if he’s ever seen outright regulatory exemptions (a green light) for high impact polluters. Ken Ferruccio watches on as Petrosky admits he has not.  WR article and letter refer to Scott Murray, Roanoke River Basin Association Upp...

Send us Fan Mail Photo: A stack of Deborah’s journals spanning from 1977 — 1982 taken from the Ferruccio’s Warren County PCB Dead Sea Scrolls.                                           __________________________________________ In this Our Road to Walk: Then and Now podcast series, Deborah and Ken continue to examine the past in the context of the present. In their last episode, they focused on th...

Send us Fan Mail Screenshot photo: Vice-President Al Gore speaking at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, Opening Reception of Climate Week, April 21, 2025 (ABC7 News Bay Area).  _____________________________________________________________________________________________ In this episode, Ken and Deborah explain why this podcast has been such a long time coming. As with many Americans, they'v...

Send us Fan Mail Ken and Deborah were recently asked by Michael Lamphier, Executive Director of the Wake Forest University School of Business, if they will speak to a class he is taking called “Communication and Conflict.” The class is part of the Master of Arts Sustainability Program at Wake Forest University.  Michael then asked them if they would share their Warren County PCB history with the c...

Send us Fan Mail Above Photo: “Making Music,” Left: Sylvia Davis Bumgardner, Robert Ferruccio, Ken Ferruccio, Robert Macon Davis (harmonica), Deborah Ferruccio (harmonica), Charlie Davis (guitar), Laura Bennie Davis, pregnant with daughter, Mariah, born the next day, July 4, 1977. (Photo by Stan Bumgardner)                                ____________________________________________________________...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Ken echoes Dr. King’s notable “How, Long? Not Long" question and refrain in a memorandum to Jonathan Howes, Secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources that outlines Ken's 5-point framework for detoxifying the Warren County PCB landfill based on conditions necessary to environmental justice. Three days earlier, t...

Send us Fan Mail Above Photo: “Warren Residents Oppose Regional Landfill," front-page, Henderson Daily Dispatch, ” by Scott Ragland, March 19, 1992.  Inset reads: “It takes Rosa Parks and puts her on the back of the bus once again.” Ken Ferruccio ______________________________________________________________________________________________ If we’re looking for social change leaders to stem th...

Send us Fan Mail Above Photo:  Bill Kearney and Dollie Burwell unveil the PCB historic marker at the September 15, 2012 30th anniversary PCB celebration held at Coley Springs Baptist Church, (Henderson Daily Dispatch, Earl King) In this episode, it comes as no real surprise to Ken and Deborah that soon after the North Carolina Public Radio interview they did with “The State of Things,” the local W...

Send us Fan Mail 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 center in the county based on the PCB legacy.  With EPA grant funding deadlines nearing and with no public engagement in the grant decision-mak...

Send us Fan Mail 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 crucial turning point for the nation, a watershed that has set precedents which continue to affect economic development, environmental protection standards,...

Send us Fan Mail 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. Charles Mulchi.  _________________________________________________________________________________________                                  In the Ro...

Send us Fan Mail 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’...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Tour organized by Charles Lee and sponsored by the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice. In this episode, Ken responds to a recent...

Send us Fan Mail 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.” He calls this the  “re-narration memory industry.” In other words, they change history. In this episode, Ken and Deborah examine how the EPA’s e...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Environmental Action Team — which includes local, state, federal, EPA and academic-affiliated members, seeks to partner with county commissioners to secur...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Observer reporter James L. Pate, Jr. In this episode, Deborah and Ken are focusing more closely on what could have been behind the 1978 North Carol...

Send us Fan Mail 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 continue to share with their listeners the events of 1980 as they relate to their PCB situation in particular and as the events relate to the larger hazardous waste issue...

Send us Fan Mail 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 follow the extraordinary events that take place in Warren County in late December, 1978, and early 1979, after citizens learn the Hunt Adminis...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Answers,” and Attorney Frank Banzet suggests that Ken shares his PCB analysis with the candidates running for governor. Ken then sends his ana...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 narrative. PCBs in North Carolina, and EPA regulations in Washington, D.C. are the battle grounds. EPA is turning hazardous waste regulations i...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Deborah ask their listeners why they should care about the seeming web of toxic waste relationships taking place back in the summer and fall of 1979 in a backwoods part of t...

Send us Fan Mail 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 connection with Concerned Citizens committee members who advise him that he needs to share the information with the public through the news medi...

Send us Fan Mail 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 examines his contradictory leadership position as a proponent of non-violent civil disobedience who felt it necessary to protect himself and Deborah with arms.  In the aftermath of the...

Send us Fan Mail 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 been pretending to seriously consider the in-place carbon treatment of the roadside PCBs. Then the Agency decides to require a 50-year study...