In the summer of 1978, Ward Transformer Company illegally dumped transformer oil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyl on the shoulder of 210 miles of North Carolina state roads in 14 counties. After discovering this dumping site of 32 cubic yards, and prosecuting the corporation responsible, the state was still left with the dilemma of removing the chemicals and finding a new, safer storage place. That winter, the state proposed 142 acres of land in Warren County to become the site of the landfill. Although deemed ecologically destructive to the community by its citizens, in 1979, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claimed the site could be made safe with engineering.
In a moving show of civil disobedience, activists from both the civil rights and environmental movements laid down in front of trucks carrying PCB-contaminated soil into the largely African-American Warren County - already inundated with more industry than any of the other counties in North Carolina. The Warren County demonstrations did not stop the new landfill, but they thrust the issue of environmental racism into the national spotlight and onto the political agenda.
In 1983, the United States General Accounting Office conducted a study of several Southern states that found three out of every four landfills were located near predominantly minority communities. In 1987, a Commission on Racial Justice report showed that the most significant factor in determining hazardous waste facility sites, nationwide, was race. The study also found that three out of every five African-Americans and Hispanics live in a community bordering an unregulated toxic waste site.
The intention behind this trend is almost as controversial as the economic results it produces. While critics of environmental racism argue that certain "ethnic or socio-economic groups bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial operations or federal, state, or local policies-(), those who deny its existence claim that "pushing away industrial jobs hurts the pocketbook of urban minorities and ruins their health - (72).