Airing Their Grievances Neighbors put Sunoco to the pollution test.

GIAN SACHDEV; Philadelphia Weekly
Januray 29, 2003

A couple weeks back a small explosion at South Philadelphia's Sunoco oil refinery sent nearby resident Joanne Rossi scrambling outside armed only with a bucket. Taking advantage of a rare opportunity, and trained for these spontaneous mishaps, Rossi was out to capture as many potentially hazardous air particles as her bucket could hold before wind carried away the evidence.

The maneuver is part of a new grassroots City Bucket Brigade program that went public at a forum Monday. It's also the latest effort by residents to take environmental testing into their own hands--a necessary move, they say, stemming from years of skewed data provided by Sunoco and the local government. "When you get environmental news from Sunoco, it's definitely downplayed, and the local government waits three months before producing emission figures," says Rossi. "[Sunoco] will always say their emissions never leave the fence line, but we know that's a lie. There's no magical dome protecting the neighborhood."

Eleven years ago Rossi and a handful of neighbors whose backyards practically border the Sunoco refinery formed the community-based coalition Southwest Enlisted Against Toxics (SEAT). The coalition eventually grew to incorporate nearly 30 civic and environmental organizations, and enlisted the help of the Philadelphia branch of Clean Water Action, a nonprofit national environmental watchdog.

Under this new guidance, the freshly renamed Community Labor Refinery Tracking Committee directed its efforts specifically toward factory emissions, forming frequent low-tech "bucket brigades" on the fringes of Sunoco's facility, says Christine Knapp, program organizer for Clean Water Action. The buckets themselves, she says, are nothing more than store-bought pails fashioned with hoses, valves and a vacuum to suck minute particle samples from surrounding air. The easy-to-operate and relatively inexpensive contraption is a big hit among community members, and plans are in the works to add six more buckets to the four already in use.

One of the most startling discoveries released Monday, says Knapp, was taken from data gathered over three separate local bucket readings. The gas-additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether--a hot topic in the environmental world--was higher than the EPA's health standard in every reading, and almost 10 times higher in one particularly disturbing sample.

But neither the coalition nor the California research labs that test the buckets' contents will say which, if any, of the dangerous compounds discovered by brigades can be directly linked to the refinery or any other nearby industry--yet.

Meanwhile, Sunoco isn't complaining about the neighborhood environmentalists' latest operation. Sunoco spokesperson Gerald Davis--who was recently forced to comment on Clean Air Act infractions discovered at his company's plants, including the one in South Philly--says the oil giant does everything it can to supply neighborhoods with information.

"We do our own testing," he says, "and they have every right to do it their way. We're only as good of a company as we are in the area of environmental issues."

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