Editing Warren County, North Carolina (section)

===PCB issue===
In 1978, a transformer manufacturer contracted a trucking company to illegally dump [[polychlorinated biphenyls]] (PCBs) alongside roads in North Carolina. The state of North Carolina assumed responsibility for cleaning up the pollution, and in December 1978, the state government purchased land in the Warren County community of Afton to establish [[Warren County PCB Landfill|a landfill]] to dispose of the chemical waste. Local residents began organizing to protest the planned disposal site, arguing better disposal options existed and that a hazardous waste facility would undercut the county's ability to attracted new industry. National civil rights organizations and politicians became involved, and about 500 protestors were arrested in September 1982 for attempting to obstruct the construction of the disposal site. While [[North Carolina PCB Protest, 1982|the demonstrations]] did not halt the creation of the landfill, the site was eventually detoxified, and a significant amount of historiographic literature attributes the start of the modern [[environmental justice]] movement to the protests.<ref name= wegner>{{cite web| url = https://www.ncpedia.org/pcb-protests| title = PCB Protests| last = Wegner| first = Ansley | date = 2012| website = NCPedia| publisher = North Carolina Government & Heritage Library| access-date = May 5, 2023}}</ref><ref>McGurty, Eileen Maura. "Warren County, NC, and the emergence of the environmental justice movement: Unlikely coalitions and shared meanings in local collective action." ''Society & Natural Resources'' 13.4 (2000): 373-387. DOI:10.1080/089419200279027</ref>