text: One of the largest deliberate PCB spills in American history occurred in the summer of 1978 when 31,000 gallons (117 m^3) of PCB-contaminated oil were illegally sprayed by the Ward PCB Transformer Company in  swaths along the roadsides of some  of North Carolina highway shoulders in 14 counties and at the Fort Liberty Army Base. The crime, known as "the midnight dumpings", occurred over nearly two weeks, as drivers of a black-painted tanker truck drove down one side of rural Piedmont highways spraying PCB-laden waste and then up the other side the following night.
  Under Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., state officials then erected large, yellow warning signs along the contaminated highways that read: "CAUTION: PCB Chemical Spills Along Highway Shoulders". The illegal dumping is believed to have been motivated by the passing of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which became effective on August 2, 1978, and increased the expense of chemical waste disposal.
  Within a couple of weeks of the crime, Robert Burns and his sons, Timothy and Randall, were arrested for dumping the PCBs along the roadsides. Burns was a business partner of Robert "Buck" Ward Jr., of the Ward PCB Transformer Company, in Raleigh. Burns and sons pleaded guilty to state and Federal criminal charges; Burns received a three to five-year prison sentence. Ward was acquitted of state charges in the dumping, but was sentenced to 18 months prison time for violation of TSCA.
  Cleanup and disposal of the roadside PCBs generated controversy, as the Governor's plan to pick up the roadside PCBs and to bury them in a landfill in rural Warren County were strongly opposed in 1982 by local residents. 
  In October 2013, at the request of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC), the City of Charlotte, North Carolina, decided to stop applying sewage sludge to land while authorities investigated the source of PCB contamination.
  In February 2014, the City of Charlotte admitted PCBs have entered their sewage treatment centers as well.
  After the 2013 SCDHEC had issued emergency regulations, the City of Charlotte discovered high levels of PCBs entering its sewage waste water treatment plants, where sewage is converted to sewage sludge. The city at first denied it had a problem, then admitted an "event" occurred in February 2014, and in April that the problem had occurred much earlier. The city stated that its very first test with a newly changed test method revealed very high PCB levels in its sewage sludge farm field fertilizer. Because of the widespread use of the contaminated sludge, SCDHEC subsequently issued PCB fish advisories for nearly all streams and rivers bordering farm fields that had been applied with city waste.