 The State of North Carolina owned about of the tract where the landfill was located, and Warren County owned the surrounding acreage around the borders.The purpose of the Warren County PCB landfill, as the public knew it, was to bury 60,000 tons of PCB-contaminated soil that had been contaminated with toxic PCBs between June and August, 1978, by Robert J. Burns, a business associate with Robert "Buck" Ward of the Ward PCB Transformer Company of Raleigh, North Carolina.Burns and his sons deliberately dripped 31,000 gallons of PCB-contaminated oil along some 240 miles of highway shoulders in 14 counties.