Our Road to Walk: Then and Now

The Warren Record Keeps the Record: EP 47 Stopping the Mega Solar Land Grab

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2028761/fan_mail/new] 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 Upper Reach Program Director whose leadership has been invaluable in educating the people and public officials on actual negative impacts of industrial-scale solar. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ In this episode, Deborah and Ken explain why they haven't podcasted for over seven months as they pivoted from their work as podcast historians back once again to researchers, educators and community activists. The issues they and other Warren County citizens have been facing are age-old ones over land use, the rights of landowners, and in this case, the power of mega corporations to try to position themselves to profit  from what industries call “solar electric gold.” Through coverage in the Warren Record, this episode follows the citizens’  “Close the Door to Horizon and Industrial-Scale Solar” campaign. As the county government moves to consolidate all its land use ordinances into one Unified Ordinance, intensive lobbying efforts to lift solar regulations are unloosed by Horizon Solar, a subsidiary of a $15 trillion international conglomerate.  The plan is to convince commissioners to lift current size and spacing solar restrictions so that Horizon can build two 450-acre mega solar facilities that will be equivalent to 1,080 football fields! The prospect that commissioners might open the regulatory door to utility-scale power so that thousands of acres of football-field-sized solar installations could be built, end-to-end along the electric grid, does not sit well with the majority of Warren County citizens who favor protecting and furthering the county’s agricultural, timber, recreational, housing, and tourism economies, as well as supporting community-scale solar.  Citizens also know the mega-scale solar land grab is possibly positioning the county for solar-powered hyper-scale AI data centers. The public’s sentiment is informed and fierce, and Warren Record coverage shows the people are relentless.  The way Ken puts it to zoning officials, “Here in a birthplace of environmental justice, the people lead.”

Our Road: Then —EP46: PCB Dead Sea Scrolls: Seven Personal Journals

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2028761/fan_mail/new] 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 the current climate crisis and the petrochemical take-over.  In this episode, they go back in their PCB Dead Sea Scrolls archives to a collection of 1982 documents that Deborah has found stuck in the last of a stack of seven of her journals spanning from 1977 to 1982. The dates on the documents coincide with her journal entries, and it’s clear from the journals that Deborah and Ken’s personal lives are inextricably woven into the documented PCB history. They share several 1982 journal entries when the euphoria they have been feeling with new teaching jobs is shattered with news that county commissioners have just dropped the county’s PCB lawsuit against the state.  To give context to the commissioners’ decision, Deborah and Ken analyze letters to the editor and news coverage leading up to it.  The county is on a collision course with the state. It has been three-and-a-half years since Ken warned the Hunt Administration there would be “due process first; then civil disobedience. But Ken and Deborah and Warren County Concerned Citizens are not done with due process, not yet, anyway.

Our Road — Now: EP 45 The Petrochemical Industry Take Over: An All Hands on Deck Moment

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2028761/fan_mail/new] 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've been busy keeping up with the current administration’s daily assault on democracy, with more than one-hundred-fifty executive orders so far, including day one’s declaration of a “state of energy emergency,” with plans to lift the “burden” of regulations on the fossil fuels and to open up all aspects of the oil and gas industry. The real emergency, according to Deborah and Ken, is that in effect, President Trump is facilitating a petrochemical takeover of the country and reversing decades of efforts to reduce deadly greenhouse emissions that are responsible for global warming and climate disaster. They read former Vice-President Gore’s sobering climate change speech delivered just before Earth Day and decide to share much of the speech with their listeners as Gore tells his audience that with this presidency we are in an existential, “all hands on deck” moment as never before, and that we have “to solve the democracy crisis in order to solve the climate crisis.”  Adding to Gore’s sentiments, Ken and Deborah share excerpts from a recently published May 14, 2025 Union of Concerned Scientists damning report titled: “Decades of Deceit: The Case Against Major Fossil Fuel Companies for Climate Fraud and Damages.” They share Yale Climate Connection  findings, namely, “The 2024 presidential election saw over $4 billion in various fossil fuel contributions to the candidates’ campaign committees and to outside groups supporting them.” Still, Ken and Deborah agree with former Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Change Convention, Christina Figueres, “The task of a mindset of stubborn optimism about the climate crisis is needed more than ever,” because, she said, “As Henry Ford phrased it, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re usually right.”

Our Road — Then — EP 44: 15 Days: Extraordinary People, Extraordinary Times

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2028761/fan_mail/new] 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 class, especially focusing on how the history began, what part did communication play in the conflict, and what are the lasting impacts. He knows how sustainability programs such as at Wake Forest University are attempting to prepare students to become sustainability leaders who will help address the daunting challenges of climate change.  Deborah and Ken decide it will be helpful to share a representative slice of this long history by following the immediate 15-day timeline for their grassroots opposition to the PCB landfill. By chronicling the fast-thinking and fast-acting of Warren County citizens in this extraordinary compressed fifteen-day period, Deborah and Ken share how ordinary citizens take extraordinary measures that will become a model for pollution prevention and sustainability.

Our Road: Then — EP 43 That Latest Yankee Invasion: Our Move from North to South

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2028761/fan_mail/new] 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)                                ______________________________________________________________           In this episode, Deborah and Ken share with their listeners the answer to questions folks often ask them: “What bought you to Warren County, and what has kept you?” They share chance encounters that seem more than accidental . . . . a family camping tradition carried on at Ocracoke Island . . . .  a convergence of North Carolina teachers with the same tradition . . . . an introduction to Warren County friends, Laura Bennie and Charlie Davis . . . . an   unforgettable day riding horses in the surf . . . . a powerful Atlantic storm that demolishes their tents and directs the Ferruccio course inland to Warren County, a place they would have never, ever thought of on their own to call home. There, in a log cabin at the end of a mile-long farm road, Deborah and Ken see the opportunity to live the simple, back-to-the-land, rural life they have been looking for. They get to know people from all walks of life who take them in with a neighborly welcome, homegrown garden meals, seasoned Southern story-telling, and back porch music. Ocracoke is not only a mystical starting point for Deborah and Ken. The island is where they return because it’s the place that helps them assess and reassess the direction of their lives. As Ken puts it in a 1980 preface, "Ocracoke is a navigational center from which to guide our course through the dangerous shoals ahead.”  Ken is, of course, obliquely referring to the dangers posed by the PCB landfill that threatens Warren County.