Society & Natural Resources, 13 : 373È387, 2000

Copyright Ó 2000 Taylor & Francis

0894± 1920/00 $12.00 1 .00

Policy Review
Warren County, NC, and the Emergence of the
Environmental Justice Movement:
Unlikely Coalitions and Shared Meanings in
Local Collective Action
EILEEN MAURA McGURTY
Friends World Program
Long Island University
Southampton, New York, USA

W arren County, North Carolina, is heralded as a watershed event of contemporary

environmentalism, as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement. T his
article identiÐes four requirements for the emergence of a social movement (cultural
frames, social networks, disruptive action, and political opportunities) and argues
that all four were met in the W arren County situation. T he article then illustrates
how the master frame of environmental justice emerged out of the speciÐc collective
action in W arren County. L astly, the article shows how criteria for waste manage±
ment decisions have shifted as a result and how these decision processes have
become more participatory.

Keywords environmental justice, environmental movement, environmental

racism, hazardous waste management

In the autumn of 1982, in a small rural community in Warren County, North Carol±
ina, a group of nearly 500 people participated in a 6± week protest against the con±
struction of a hazardous waste landŽll. Despite the extensive eŒorts of the
protesters, the landŽll was completed and all the contaminated soil designated for
disposal at the site was delivered. This story could be seen as just another local
protest, unsuccessful in its goal, grounded in the not± in± my± backyard (NIMBY)
mentality. However, Warren County is heralded as a transformative event of con±
temporary environmentalism, the birth place of the environmental justice move±
ment :

The protests marked the Žrst time African Americans had mobilized a
national broad± based group to oppose what they deŽned as environmental
racism. (Bullard 1994, 5È6)
Warren County is important because activities there set oŒthe national
environmental justice movement. (Chavis 1993, 3).

Received 8 July 1997 ; accepted 30 March 1999.

Address correspondence to Eileen Maura McGurty, Assistant Professor, Friends World Program,
Long Island University, Southampton, NY 11968, USA. E± mail : [email protected]

373
374 E. M. McGurty

The 1982 demonstration against the siting of a . . . PCB landŽll in

Warren County, North Carolina was a watershed event in the environ±
mental equity movement (U.S. EPA 1992, 6).

The Warren County events were not the Žrst time the issues of inequitable
distribution of environmental risk emerged onto the environmental policy scene
(McGurty 1997), nor the only important event shaping the environmental justice
movement and the resulting policy changes. However, the legacy of the events in
Warren County and the meanings that are derived from these events are central to
understanding the contemporary environmental justice policy discussion. This
article uses recent developments in social movement theory to examine the emer±
gence of the environmental justice movement through an in± depth analysis of the
‘‘watershed event’’ in Warren County. The article then demonstrates how Warren
County shaped new developments in waste± related policy discussions.

Social Movement Theory

Social movement theory has two schools : resource mobilization and identity± based
theories. Resource mobilization focuses on how to garner resources for social move±
ment organizations, and how to mobilize individuals to participate in activities of
these organizations (Jenkins 1983 ; McAdam, et al., 1988). One limitation of resource
mobilization is the assumption that grievances and goals are Žxed and uncontested.
The identity± based theories oŒer a much needed corrective by focusing on informa±
tional and symbolic systems (Melucci 1985 ; Touraine 1984). In the identity± based
theories, the meanings of grievances and goals are constantly negotiated by the
members of the movement. Environmental justice scholarship grounded in resource
mobilization focuses on organizational structures of environmental justice activism
(Bullard 1990, 1993 ; Hurley 1995 ; Mohai 1990 ; Hofrichter 1993). Environmental
justice scholarship using identity± based theories suggests that contested meanings
about environmental identity are at the heart of environmental justice activism
(Pulido 1996 ; Gottlieb 1993).
If we understand the central task of movements as ‘‘coordinating, sustaining
and giving meaning to collective action’’ (Tarrow 1994, 16), then a theoretical bridge
must be built between resource mobilization and identity± based theories. Tarrow
(1994) synthesizes the two schools with his four requirements for the development of
a movement : cultural frames, social networks, repertoires of action, and political
opportunities.
1. Cultural frames : In movements, symbols are strategically chosen from the exist±
ing cultural beliefs and manipulated into new modes of thinking through collec±
tive action. This process has been identiŽed as ‘‘framing’’ and has two major
components (Snow et al. 1986 ; Snow and Benford 1988, 1992). A collective action
frame shapes meaning for a speciŽc action, and a master frame signiŽes meanings
for an entire movement. Success demands that frames diagnose problems, attrib±
ute blame, and construct solutions. Master frames must, additionally, be exible,
easily elaborated, and resonant with potential participants.
2. Social networks : The challenge to movements is to develop organizations that
are exible, informal, and emerge out of associations of everyday life. As reforms
are attained, these mobilizing structures can retreat back to their ‘‘organic associ±
ations,’’ ready to form again into organizational structures of a movement if a
renewed opportunity emerges.
 Emergence of the Environmental Justice Movement 375

3. Disruptive action : Disruptive action ‘‘obstructs the routine activities of

opponents, bystanders or authorities’’ (Tarrow 1994, 108) and must be Žxed in
tactics known and understood by potential constituents. The task of collective
action organizers is to create innovations on the recognized forms of action. In
this way, potential participants are familiar with the action to make participation
more likely, but the threat of disorder and uncertainty still prevail (Tilly 1986 ;
Tarrow 1994).
4. Political opportunities : In order for a social movement to develop, favorable
political shifts that improve the chances of success and lower the cost of
organizing action are needed. The shifts include implementation of reforms,
accessibility of institutions, and availability of allies (McAdam 1982 ; Tarrow
1994).
In Warren County all of these requirements were met and the development of a
new social movement was possible. First, environmental racism was the collective
action frame with its unique diagnosis, attribution of blame, and proposed solutions.
Second, informal associations, connected to the civil rights movement, had receded
into daily life and were now ready to emerge with this new opportunity. Third, the
disruptive action in Warren County followed closely the repertoire established by
civil rights activism several decades earlier and was well known by participants,
bystanders, and authorities. The organizers were also able to modify it slightly to
create signiŽcant disorder. Lastly, political opportunities were ripe: Hazardous
waste reforms created an atmosphere for extensive environmental reforms ; changes
in environmental legislation had enabled citizens to inuence environmental deci±
sion making ; shifts in African± American electoral politics also opened the Želd for
action.
In the wake of Warren County, environmental racism shifted into a broader,
more elaborative and resonant environmental justice master frame. As a result of
this innovative interpretive scheme of potential environmental harm, criteria for
management decision± making shifted. Moreover, the introduction of a social dimen±
sion to waste management decisions shows the subjectivity inherent in scientiŽcally
based decisions and the necessity to keep environmental management decisions
transparent and participatory.

Warren County and the Emergence of Environmental Justice

The situation began in the summer of 1978 when Robert Burns and his two sons
drove liquid tanker trucks along state roads in rural North Carolina and opened the
bottom valve of the tankers, discharging polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)± contami±
nated liquid, removed from the Ward Transformer company in Raleigh, onto the
soil along the road shoulders. This violation of the Toxic Substance Control Act
continued for nearly 2 weeks until 240 miles of road shoulders were contaminated.
In the face of a possible public health disaster and a political debacle, the state was
determined to Žnd a Žnal resting place as quickly as possible. A farmer in the small
rural community of Afton in Warren County, facing foreclosure and bankruptcy,
sold his property to the state and, although the site did not meet all the require±
ments for building a hazardous waste landŽll, the state was convinced that the site
could be engineered to safely contain the PCB± contaminated soil in perpetuity.
The announcement of the siting sparked an intense NIMBY resistance from the
county, and led to 3 years of unsucessful legal battles. In the summer of 1982, the
376 E. M. McGurty

state was permitted to begin construction of the landŽll and locals changed their
oppositional strategy to disruptive direct action. Warren County Citizens Con±
cerned about PCB (Concerned Citizens), the group leading the initial opposition,
were mostly white landowners who had no experience or know± how in direct action.
The choice for direct action necessitated building a coalition with local civil rights
leaders. This collaboration, while unsuccessful in its immediate goal to stop the
construction of the landŽll, has had a lasting impact on the environmental move±
ment and environmental policy.

Environmental Racism as Collective Action Frame

Prior to the disruptive collective action, the opposition was shaped by a NIMBY
frame. However, the change in tactics also led to the development of an innovative
collective action frame, environmental racism, with a new diagnosis of the problem,
attribution of blame, and proposed solutions. Under the environmental racism
frame, groundwater and local economy issues were overshadowed by a claim that
Warren County was chosen because the residents were primarily poor and African±
American. The frame constructed a new understanding of environmental harm as
integrally related to political powerlessness. Warren County was composed of 65%
African± Americans and was the 97th poorest county in the state out of 100 counties.
Under the environmental racism frame, these characteristics created a greater risk to
residents from environmental hazards.
Under the previous NIMBY frame, threats to groundwater and local economy
were the main worries for the residents. Blame was placed directly in the decision±
making system that had enabled the siting choice to be made, and the proposed
solution was simply to present a reasoned argument for siting the landŽll elsewhere.
At the initial public hearing, many Warren County residents advocated for other
sites in North Carolina :

We think that the site chosen for the PCBs should be safe beyond any
reasonable doubt whatsoever. In as much as there appear to be sites else±
where in the State of North Carolina that can handle PCBs, we feel that it
is only reasonable that the state would look to those sites and reject the
Pope site. (Meyer, in U.S. EPA 1979, 154)

Better yet, according to citizens, why not truck the contaminated soil to the
chemical waste landŽll in Emelle, Alabama ? The site had been approved by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was constructed, and had been operating
successfully, as far as they knew. While this option would cost considerably more
money, how could the state put a price tag on the value of lives in Warren County ?
Shipment to Alabama, no matter what the cost, was the official position of Con±
cerned Citizens. As articulated by its dynamic and tenacious leader :

PCB on the road shoulders and PCB in temporary storage should be sent
to Alabama, one of the three legal national dumping sites where I under±
stand every precaution has been taken, unlike the situation here in Warren
County. (K. Ferruccio, in U.S. EPA 1979, 100)

The initial introduction of the environmental racism frame was through the
court system after all other suits had been dismissed. The local chapter of the
 Emergence of the Environmental Justice Movement 377

NAACP Žled for an injunction arguing that the high percentage of minority
residents was one factor inuencing the decision to site the landŽll in Warren
County. The ruling against the plaintiŒs claimed :

Throughout all the hearings conducted by the state and federal offices, it
was never suggested that race may have been a motivating factor in the
location of the site for the landŽll. (NAACP et al. v. Gorsuch et al. 1982, 6).

However, the issue had been raised before the Žnal hour in a slightly di Œerent
and more vague form. The local chapter of the NAACP spoke frequently of the
stigma of the landŽll hampering eŒorts and economic development in the county,
and many residents, black and white, spoke of the relative poverty in the county as
placing them in a position of political powerlessness. (U.S. EPA 1979 ; Howard
1979 ; W arren Record 1979). No one on either side of the controversy was willing to
delve into the potential implications. Once the opponents had chosen the strategy of
the courts, they were obliged to engage in the legal language where, heretofore, there
was no room to address environmental racism. The new frame had to be introduced
through more unofficial channels of collective action.
The attribution of blame under the environmental racism frame became much
broader than with the NIMBY frame. The direct decision makers in this one situ±
ation were expanded to include the history of racial discrimination throughout the
South. Moreover, the scope of the problem burgeoned under the new collective
action frame. There were many Warren Counties out there, and perhaps, many of
these poor, predominately black communities had been host to hazardous waste
facilities. Hazardous waste issues were new territory for civil rights activists, but
they soon realized that Warren County might not be a unique situation. As Golden
Frinks (1995), an experienced civil rights activist involved in the Warren County
protests, articulated :

I did not know anything about it, so I did a little research. I called Atlanta
and told Albert [ Love ] what I was involved in and wanted him to put it in
the ear of Lowery [ the president of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference ]. That I thought it was a good movement and thought he
should become involved. I also wanted him to Žnd out if there were other
toxic waste dumps in black communities. They found it in South Carolina.

The most important implication of the new problem deŽnition was that ship±
ment of the contaminated soil to Emelle, AL, was no longer a viable option for the
activists who had advocated this solution within the NIMBY frame of the oppo±
sition. As it turned out, Emelle, AL, host to the largest hazardous waste facility in
the nation, was also a poor town with a majority African± American population and
with extensive compliance and regulatory problems (Baily et al. 1993).
The production of a new collective action frame must be born out of already
existing interpretive schema (Snow and Benford 1988). The NIMBY frame and civil
rights frame had a conceptual link that enabled the emergence of environmental
racism. As a typical opposition to a waste± related locally unwanted land use, anger
about the loss of local control over land use decisions was a powerful mobilizing
factor (Freudenberg 1984 ; Greenberg and Anderson 1984 ; Portney 1991 ; Popper
1987). Civil rights, as well, had an analysis of distrust for government decisions. This
discursive link, then, became the key to transforming the Warren County case to a
deŽning moment for the environmental justice movement.
378 E. M. McGurty

Social Networks and Alliances

When it became clear that direct action was needed, it seemed unlikely that Con±
cerned Citizens, comprised mostly of local white residents, would actively seek to
build a collaboration with civil rights activists. 1 The leaders had no direct ties to
black leaders, so they drew on their association through Concerned Citizens with
the pastor of the black Baptist Church located 1 12 miles from the proposed site.
Reverend Luther Brown of Coley Springs Baptist Church had connected briey
with the group because some of his church members lived adjacent to the site.
Brown united Concerned Citizens with the United Church of Christ (UCC) Com±
mission for Racial Justice, led by a UCC pastor, Leon White, a seasoned civil rights
activist whose church was on the outskirts of Warren County (Ferrucio 1994 ; White
1994 ; Brown 1994). 2 This initial connection was all the group needed to link into a
signiŽcant network of formal civil rights organizations and informal associations,
ready to form into collective action organizing groups.
The group Žrst was able to engage Ben Chavis, a renowned and well± respected
activist in North Carolina and a member of the local UCC. The connection with the
UCC also enabled opponents to receive support of the Southern Christian Lead±
ership Conference (SCLC), the organization associated with Martin Luther King.
Floyd McKissick, a member of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and active
in the civil rights movement, was a nearby resident with business interests in the
area. He decided, after Leon White had engaged the UCC in the cause, to join the
eŒorts, in hopes of protecting his business projects in the area. He also enlisted the
help of his long± time colleague and friend Golden Frinks, who lived a few counties
away, for help with the daily strategizing. Frinks had worked closely with SCLC
and contacted the then president, Joseph Lowery, who immediately left Atlanta,
GA, for Warren County. Lowery then connected with a SCLC board member,
Walter Fauntroy, who was a congressional representative for the District of Colum±
bia (Frinks 1995 ; White 1994 ; Fauntroy 1994). Due to the signiŽcant social net±
works available to the opponents, these powerful African± American leaders were
available to the group and helped to legitimize and empower the opposition.
The social networks also tapped into the residents of Warren County through
associations already established for everyday life. Once the civil rights leaders were
involved, many residents who had worked with them in the 1960s were back into
the fold, oŒering hospitality for those traveling and phoning friends and family to
spread the latest information (Burwell 1994 ; M. G. Harris 1994). The two churches,
Coley Springs Baptist Church and United Church of Christ, provided excellent
outlets for information to their members. In addition, these churches were linked to
a whole network of other churches, with both black and white memberships, and
solicited support from them (Brown 1994 ; Ferruccio 1994 ; White 1994). Since the
voter registration campaigns were in full force in the fall, this was also an
opportunity for meeting with fellow residents of the county and talking about the
issues of real importance to the county (Burwell 1994 ; Somerville 1994).

Disruptive Collective Action

With the assistance of experienced civil rights organizers, a direct action campaign
against the landŽll was waged from September 15 through October 12, 1982 (State
Highway Patrol 1982 ; W arren Record 1982). Protest events ranged from a handful
of participants to several hundred, with an average of 75, and successfully disrupted
the orderly and efficient completion of the landŽll. The power of the protests came
 Emergence of the Environmental Justice Movement 379

from the repertoire of actions honed by the civil rights activists two decades earlier
(Morris 1984). The similarities were immediately apparent and comforting to many
potential participants :

The whole thing was a revival of the whole civil rights stu α the tone, the
look, the chants, the point. It was more like a civil rights protest than any
NIMBY opposition. (Hart 1995)

Participants were familiar with the pattern for activism and could easily fall into
its rhythm. Although not all whites in the county were willing to join, the actions of
the civil rights movement were familiar to blacks and whites and could mobilize
both races. Meetings at Coley Springs, the high visibility of well± known African±
American activists, the incorporation of prayer into all the protests, and the long±
distance march± from Warrenton to Raleigh± all were part of an established
repertoire of civil rights activism familiar to county residents as well as activists
from other places who joined the locals.
The church was the focal point of the organizing. The physical site provided the
space, and the authority of church± related individuals provided the legitimacy.
Several hundred people attended the ‘‘mass meetings’’ held daily. Some of the
attendees participated in the protests ; others were only willing to attend the meet±
ings. The church meetings were ‘‘motivational’’ with well± respected speakers, includ±
ing famous civil rights leaders as well as several antitoxic activists. The meetings
also provided a place to ‘‘pass the basket’’ and to inform participants of the plan
that had been decided by the organizers.
The style of marches up the road from the church to the landŽll entrance also
mimicked the earlier civil rights marches. The group used similar chants and songs,
as well as inventing new words for old melodies. Also, prayer was an integral com±
ponent of each march, as it had been at the mass meetings in the church. One
march, in particular, was reminiscent of the old civil rights days, duplicating the
infamous Selma to Montgomery march. Over a several± day period in early October,
the group walked a sixty mile route from Warren County to Raleigh, where they
presented their cause to the state capital and the U.S. EPA offices in Research
Triangle Park just outside Raleigh (W arren Record 1982 ; Bright 1994 ; Burwell
1994 ; Brown 1994 ; Ferruccio 1994 ; Frinks 1995 ; White 1994).
In addition to following the established repertoire from the civil rights move±
ment, the landŽll situation presented an opportunity for innovative, dramatic action.
When the trucks brought the contaminated soil from the road shoulders to the
landŽll, the protesters lay down on the road in front of the oncoming trucks. This
tactic of symbolically blocking the source of the contamination delayed the project
and raised visibility of the events.

When the protesters confronted the state troopers on the road, it was like
the early 60s marches all over again. It was frightening to be on the scene.
(Griffin 1995)

Political Opportunities for Collective Action

The historical moment of Warren County was ripe with political opportunities.
Hazardous waste, the silent killer, became renowned for its vast and uncertain
potential for destruction. The fear of contamination was fueled by the timing of the
380 E. M. McGurty

North Carolina incident : The dumping of the PCB± contaminated liquid occurred
exactly at the same time when hazardous waste became a household word with the
Love Canal catastrophe in August 1978 (T elevision News Abstracts and Index 1978).
The infusion of the hazardous waste issue into public discourse through the Love
Canal news coverage had two impacts. The toxic threat was always lurking in the
background ; no one had immunity, not whites, not blacks, not wealthy, not poor.
Also, the government was implicated in the victimization of citizens by toxic
materials (Szasz 1994). The strong connection between the two cases of contami±
nation was further strengthened when PCBs were identiŽed as part of the contami±
nation in Love Canal.
At the onset of the Warren County controversy in December 1978, the state and
federal infrastructure for managing hazardous waste was rickety. The implementa±
tion of the PCB± related policies was constrained by the low priority given to it by
the Carter administration. As a result, partial regulations were issued in 1980, 2
years after the statutory deadline. These regulations omitted the technical standards
for treatment, storage, and disposal facilities, and permits were easily attained based
on interim (and very loose) standards (Epstein et al. 1982 ; Szasz 1994). By 1982, the
regulations had become slightly more Žrm, but the U.S. EPA was even more vulner±
able from the Superfund± related scandals. The problems with hazardous waste
policy implementation created a frightening prospect for residents. Technological
advances that had held the promise of increased liberty now carried another, darker
side, which threatened to subjugate and victimize citizens by reinforcing existing
systems of inequality.
Moreover, it was the concept of contamination by synthetic chemicals that
enabled the addition of an environmental identity to the civil rights frame. The two
issues of the initial opposition were translated into a language that resonated with
past experiences of blacks in the county : Blacks had been victims of past transgres±
sions at the hands of whites, causing excessive poverty, physical su Œering, and even
death. The landŽll was the latest manifestation of their experience for the past
several centuries. As one participant, a local civil rights activist since the early 1960s,
put it :

They use black people as guinea pigs. Anytime there is something that is
going to kill, we’ll put it in the black area to Žnd out if it kills and how
many. They don’t care. They don’t value a black person’s life. (M. G. Harris
1994)

A need to change discriminatory land use decisions had been part of a civil
rights agenda earlier (McGurty 1997); however, the civil rights involvement of the
Warren County case added an environmental dimension as well as a social/
economic/political dimension to the problem. Moreover, the contamination was
thrust upon them from the state and federal government. Since this same govern±
ment had failed many times in the recent past to protect blacks, it was not difficult
to see that another failure was imminent. Civil rights constructed an environmental
identity as the true protectors of African± Americans and in opposition to the gov±
ernment agencies who were not protecting all citizens equally.
The changing political stage also altered the conceptualization of civil rights
and established a political opening for intensiŽed civil rights activism. The change in
political regime in the 1980s pointed to the possibility that many civil rights reforms
 Emergence of the Environmental Justice Movement 381

could easily be rescinded (Manning 1984). In the face of these challenges, hazardous
waste issues pointed to a more subtle and insidious process of marginalization and
oppression, indicating that civil rights reforms needed strengthening and certainly
not dismantling. This national± scale issue was played out in Warren County and
was tied directly to the landŽll controversy.
When the county settled the case with the state, enabling the landŽll to move
forward with a modiŽed landŽll design, the 1982 elections were only a few months
away. The court settlement gave blacks in the county another reason to vote against
the essentially white political establishment. The majority black county had been in
a long struggle to gain equal representation in county decision making, beginning
with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 when prerequisites for registering and voting
were removed (Engstrom 1988). In 1981È1982, as part of the extensive campaign
throughout the South to garner congressional support for the extension of the
Voting Rights Act, renewed eŒorts were made at voter registration among African±
Americans in the county. The same African± Americans who led the voter regis±
tration campaign in the county were key to the direct action protests at the landŽll
during the autumn of the same year, and the two issues of blacks gaining political
power and the landŽll opposition were inextricably linked. 3 In the time between the
county’s withdrawal of the suit and the general election of 1982 (which took place at
the end of the landŽll protests) the overall number of voters registered in Warren
County increased by 30%; 65% of the overall increase was from nonwhite regis±
trants (County of Warren 1982). Since race still determined the outcome of elections,
the huge increase of black registered voters changed the entire political landscape.
In November 1982 African± Americans won the majority of positions in the county,
including a majority of seats on the county board, the sheriŒ, the registrar of deeds,
and state assembly representative (Durham Herald 1982).

Environmental Racism Transformed to Environmental Justice

In the years immediately following Warren County, two series of activities emerged
directly from the action in Warren County that transformed the collective action
frame of environmental racism to the master frame of environmental justice. First,
Ken Ferruccio of Concerned Citizens and Leon White of the UCC gave talks
together in other communities opposing hazardous waste facilities throughout the
eastern seaboard and spread the message of the environmental racism frame
(Ferruccio 1994 ; White 1994). While environmental racism was yet to become a
widely used and understood term among environmentalists, in the mid 1980s
environmental racism was becoming an integral part of the antitoxic movement
(Freudenberg and Steinsapir 1991 ; Szasz 1994).
In addition to this ongoing activism, Warren County instigated the surge of
research into the issue of distributive justice in waste facility siting, the scientiŽc
cornerstone of the environmental justice movement. The initial study into this phe±
nomena (General Accounting Office 1983) came about because Congressman Faun±
troy returned to Washington, DC, after his participation in Warren County and
solicited the assistance of representatives Jim Florio and Al Gore, two champions of
environmental causes, to request an investigation by the General Accounting Office.
While the methodology could not be defended, the results inuenced the UCC
(1987) to launch its own investigation. From this study, also questionable in its
methodology, a spate of investigations into location of waste facilities was generated
382 E. M. McGurty

(Anderson et al. 1994 ; Baden and Coursey 1997 ; Bryant and Mohai 1992 ; Colquette
and Robertson 1991 ; General Accounting Office 1995 ; Goldman and Fitton 1994 ;
Hird 1993).
In order to document the central claim of the environmental racism frame, that
waste facilities were disproportionately located in communities of color, investiga±
tors had to entertain the idea that other social factors might contribute to location
decisions as well, particularly ‘‘class’’± related factors. In many of the studies, it
seemed there was at least an interactive eŒect of ‘‘race’’ and ‘‘class,’’ if not separate
eŒects. While there still remains a signiŽcant debate in the literature about whether
race or class has the greater eŒect in determining location of waste sites, the
environmental racism frame was immediately broadened and extended, applicable
to a wide array of collective actions (Bullard 1993). These ideas were already inher±
ent in the environmental racism frame as developed in Warren County. The discur±
sive link that enabled the whites and blacks to work together was that the state had
misused its power by making a local land use decision without sufficient input from
residents who had very little political clout in the state political arena. The notion of
political powerlessness for 45% of the residents of Warren County was related
directly to poverty issues.
Attempts to characterize the scale and scope of the environmental justice move±
ment belie its magnitude and impact (Sachs 1995). Less than a decade after the
Warren County incident, two inuential national conferences were organized. The
Michigan Conference on the Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards
concluded its proceedings with a letter to the U.S. EPA petitioning the agency to
address the issue seriously and resulted in the Žrst U.S. EPA study of environmental
injustices (Bryant and Mohai 1992 ; U.S. EPA 1992). The First National People of
Color Environmental Leadership Conference Summit issued the Principles of
Environmental Justice, now recognized as the basic tenets of the movement (Lee
1992). In February 1994, Environmental Justice Executive Order 12250 (the EO)
was signed, mandating a signiŽcant policy shift at the federal level : ‘‘Each Federal
agency shall make achieving environmental justice part of its mission.’’ While the
extent of implementation of the EO is still an empirical question, the issue is fully
integrated into the policy arena with a U.S. EPA Office of Environmental Justice to
oversee the EO as well as an environmental justice advisory group to the U.S. EPA
(U.S. EPA 1993, 1995). The EO was the fruition of a decade of work in the move±
ment. The two national conferences, the myriad of environmental justice activism at
the local level, the extensive lobbying eŒorts by regional and national environmental
justice organizations, and the spate of media coverage of the issue all contributed to
this policy shift. While this one landŽll protest event in Warren County did not
create the environmental justice movement alone, the organizers and participants in
the movement acknowledged Warren County as the central event instigating the
contemporary environmental justice movement. The power ascribed to the events in
Warren County by activists and policymakers suggests that the nascent meanings
about environmental justice formed here are signiŽcant shapers of our understand±
ing of environmental justice.

Environmental Justice and Waste Management Policy

Environmental justice, as it emerged from the Warren County collective action,
unwittingly transformed waste management policy in three ways. First, the criteria
 Emergence of the Environmental Justice Movement 383

for determining a sound location for a waste facility have changed signiŽcantly.
Second, environmental justice brings into question waste management policies that
assume the continued increasing production of waste, and third, the potential for
disproportionate environmental harm has reinforced and expanded the need for
direct citizen participation in policy decisions.
The most basic level of change for waste management is the inclusion of
‘‘environmental justice’’ criteria in location decisions. When the state of North
Carolina Žrst was looking at sites for the hazardous waste landŽll, there was no
formal process for evaluating if the landŽll would disproportionately impact the
poor or people of color. The entire idea was completely foreign to the waste man±
agement agencies (Meyer 1994). However, it is now regular practice of waste
agencies to include these demographic factors in their site analysis along with soil
type, hydrogeologic features, and Žscal considerations (Vorhees 1997).
The second major waste policy impact is to challenge the underlying assump±
tion guiding all waste management policy : continued expansion of hazardous waste
generation and an ever± increasing supply of waste facilities. The master frame of
environmental justice, in order to build its network with other activists, had to
abandon any vestiges of NIMBY± ism for solutions to the problem of waste manage±
ment. The process, as we have seen, had already begun in Warren County when the
activists deŽned the problem with the larger scope of the environmental racism
frame. The scope is even further expanded with environmental justice, and the solu±
tion of ‘‘anywhere but here’’ was totally untenable. Instead, the problem deŽnition
under environmental justice frame is ‘‘the model of economic and industrial devel±
opment predicated on waste expansion’’ (Ferruccio 1993, 2). With this problem deŽ±
nition, the only solution is to resist expansion of waste management facilities. As a
result, the environmental justice movement has challenged waste policies under the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to challenge industry to reduce
the waste generated (Szasz 1994). A ‘‘pollution prevention’’ strategy precludes the
need for additional sitings as it lowers the possibility of disproportionate environ±
mental harm.
The last area of policy impact relates to meaningful citizen participation in
decision making. The environmental justice movement continues to demand this
involvement and has, to some extent, been successful in attaining it. In Warren
County, assurances from experts that the risk to Warren County residents were
minimal did not ease their worries. Further, it became more and more clear as the
process developed that these scientiŽc experts were working with a signiŽcant
amount of uncertainty in their determination of risk. The scientiŽc uncertainty was
underscored by the changing EPA regulations for hazardous waste.

New statistics and methods are making [ EPA standards ] obsolete. Who
provides the new statistics ? The families of New York, the victims of Vir±
ginia who were told that it was safe? . . . . Statistics tell us human error is
inevitable. (Bumgardner, in U.S. EPA 1979, 123È124)

The governor of North Carolina, Jim Hunt, even acknowledged this difficulty of
scientiŽc uncertainty in a letter he wrote to residents of Warren County :

The state is convinced, on the basis of the best scientiŽc evidence that is
available to us, that the landŽll is safe and will remain safe in the future. But
384 E. M. McGurty

you and I have seen that scientists can disagree, and their disagreements
concern us. (Hunt 1982)

The scientiŽc uncertainty challenged the predominate notion that the govern±
ment could safeguard citizens from the hazardous by± products of industrial tech±
nology. Moreover, as it became possible that hazardous waste sites could be chosen,
at least in part, with nongeophysical criteria, the citizens demanded increasing input
into those decisions through more meaningful citizen participation.
Recent developments in Warren County serve to illustrate all three levels of
policy changes. In 1993, 10 years after the Warren County landŽll was capped, there
was evidence of signiŽcant contamination from leachate (Howes 1993). In the face of
a new public health threat, the citizens in Warren County have successfully made
several demands of the state waste management agency. Most important are the
procedural demands that a joint task force of citizen representatives and state
employees work out the speciŽc details of how to manage the waste crisis. The task
force has been established and is a precedent± setting situation in public partici±
pation. This is not a ‘‘Citizen Advisory Committee’’ where the state develops plans
and a group of citizens responds to them. The task force gives all parties equal voice
in the planning process. The citizens also made two substantive requests granted by
the state. First and foremost, the citizens want the problem to be handled on site.
They know that if the contamination from the landŽll is sent elsewhere, another
powerless community will be opened to the environmental risk posed. The citizens
also requested an independent scientiŽc assessment of the contamination and poten±
tial for risk (Ballance 1994 ; Burwell 1994 ; Elmore 1994 ; Ferruccio 1993).
While Warren County residents may, in fact, face a unique situation of unprece±
dented power with the state due to its notoriety in the environmental movement,
this is a drastic shift in procedure for making management decisions that give
opportunity for meaningful input from citizens. As these participation processes
become more widespread, resource managers and scholars can assess their eŒec±
tiveness in creating more equitable waste management strategies with decreased
emphasis on waste expansion.

Notes
1. It was unlikely due to the history of racial tension in the South. Particularly, in
Warren County during the civil rights actions of the early 1960s, many confrontations
between local black residents and white residents occurred (Bright 1994 ; J. Harris 1994).
Further, prior to the association with the civil rights groups, Concerned Citizens had reached
out to both Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms. Although the cry for help was ignored by both
Reagan and Helms, the willingness of Concerned Citizens to ally themselves with two major
opponents of civil rights activism demonstrates that the eventual alliance of whites and blacks
was not easily attained.
2. In the interviews there were conicting reports of whose initiative it was to involve the
Commission on Racial Justice in the direct action. There were suggestions from some that the
commission had made overtures to become involved prior to the meeting arranged by Brown.
Most of these suggestions also included a blaming of ‘‘black leaders’’ for agitation and cre±
ating an unnecessary conict.
3. For example, Dollie Burwell, who won the registrar of deeds position in 1982 and
continues in that position today, played a most signiŽcant role in this drive. Her eŒorts were
directly tied to the larger agenda of the national civil rights organizations. Burwell’s involve±
ment in voter registration began with her relationship with two key civil rights activists in
 Emergence of the Environmental Justice Movement 385

North Carolina, Leon White and Ben Chavis, as well as with members of the SCLC (Burwell
1994 ; Lee 1995 ; M. G. Harris 1994 ; Somerville 1994 ; White 1994).

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