The bucket brigades were started in 1995 by attorney Edward Masry
(of Erin Brockovich fame) when both were made ill by fumes from a
petroleum refinery he was suing on behalf of citizens of Contra Costa
County, California. When he called the local, state and federal
environmental authorities, they told him that their monitors detected
no problem. This so angered Masry, whose clients were being exposed to
these toxic releases daily, that he hired an environmental engineer to
design a low cost device, the "bucket", which the community could use
to monitor their exposure for themselves. This set in motion a movement
which would give communities living near refineries, chemical plants or
other toxic air emitting sources, a chance to take on indifferent
regulators and corporations who were telling them that there is no
problem with the air they are breathing while they are choking and
dying.
The "bucket" is a low cost $75 version of the $2000 Suma canister
used by government and industry and is simple to use. Suspect air is
drawn into a Tedlar bag inside the bucket. The bag is then sealed and
sent to a laboratory for analysis. The lab analysis is the most
expensive part of the operation. For about $500 per sample, the
contents of the bag are run through a GCMS (Gas Chromatograph Mass
Spectrometer), which compares the "fingerprints" of the sample with the
fingerprints of about 100 toxic gases in the computer library. The bag
is non-reusable and cost about $15. In practice, much of this cost has
been borne by charitable and government grants.
Working closely with Masry, Denny Larson proceeded to promote the
use of these buckets in other communities exposed to refinery and other
toxic air emissions. Larson hired a student intern to re-engineer the
buckets in order to produce a community manual to educate fenceline
neighbors that they could build and operate their own air monitoring
systems. When completed, the manual helped spread the buckets
throughout the refinery belt of Contra Costa County to 7 communities.
The biggest hurdle was getting the authorities, who belittled the
idea of citizen bucket brigades, to accept the results. Larson met with
EPA Region 9 officials, including the administrator, Felicia Marcus, in
1996 and asked the agency to approve and fund bucket air sampling. To
its credit, EPA Region 9 invested in a quality assurance evaluation of
the bucket results and ended up accepting them. With the EPA
acceptance, Denny was able to work with grass roots groups around the
country to launch local bucket brigades.
Denny Larson explains that typically there are no monitoring devices
in industrial zones. They are often 10, 20 miles away and even upwind
of the sources. Thus when the public complains about bad smells and
chocking fumes, the regulatory authorities and industries scoff and ask
for their data. With just a few air samples, Larson explains, the
community can collapse the house of cards built by the government and
industry that pollution doesn't cross the industry's fence line.
Although started in California, the greatest success of the bucket
brigadiers has been in Louisiana. The largely African-American
community of Moossville in Calcasieu Parish is home to over 53
industrial factories, more than forty of which are located within a
10-mile radius. Tired of being the victims of lackadaisical government
enforcement, which tolerated frequent accidental toxic releases, in
September 1998, Mossville residents of "fenceline communities" formed a
bucket brigade and began taking samples. Even though publicized in
advance, 2 of the 5 original samples found violations of Louisiana
standards for vinyl chloride, EDC and benzene. Subsequent samples were
even worse. One later sample found carcinogenic benzene in excess of
220 times the Statešs standard.
This got the attention of the press and the enforcement authorities.
The EPA Region 6 Administrator made a publicized tour of the area. By
1999 the bucket brigades had spread throughout the cancer alley of
Louisiana, leading to the formation of a new non profit, the Louisiana
Bucket Brigade (www.labucketbrigade.org).
Region 6 moved in with their own high priced monitoring devices that
confirmed high pollution levels even higher than the buckets had
detected. Fines were levied and state-of-the-art fenceline monitoring
devices were required of some polluters. The Regional office has since
given grants to community groups to continue bucket monitoring.
Pollution has been significantly reduced, all of which stemmed from a
few citizen activists with their buckets. Bucket brigadiers have been
active in California, Ohio, Louisiana, Pennsylvannia and Texas with a
proven track record of effectiveness.
