The "Bucket Brigade" effort began in Northern California in 1995, when residents near oil refineries and chemical plants grew tired of toxic releases and the lack of independent information on air pollution. Together with technical experts and funding from public interest attorneys, simple air monitoring devices (called "Buckets") were provided to community members in one refinery neighborhood. Eventually Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) organized a regional effort to provide "Buckets" to five industrial communities in the San Francisco Bay area.
CBE pressured County Supervisors to order the local health department to provide funding and support to officially further the effort. CBE then convinced the U.S. E.P.A. to endorse and provide $90,000 to ensure the scientific credibility and pay for tests. The EPA has verified the scientific reliability of the "Bucket" technology and community protocol for collecting air samples.
In 1994 as Larson and local groups completed an 8 year battle to win an Environmental Justice Good Neighbor Agreement with Chevron's Richmond, CA, refinery located in the poorest and largest African American neighborhood in the region. One of the attorneys for the community, Graham Boyd, found himself in Durban, SA, in the midst of a local refinery battle with neighbors. Graham Boyd contacted SAEPEJ prior to his first trip to South Africa for possible environmental contacts. SAEPEJ provided Boyd with a list of contacts in Cape Town and Durban which led to Boyd's extensive and extremely helpful involvement with environmental issues on South Africa.
There are four large refineries operating in SA - the South African Petroleum Refinery (Shell and BP) in Durban, the Engen (Petronas) refinery, also in Durban, the Caltex refinery in Cape Town and the National Petroleum Refiners (Sasol and Total) refinery in Sasolburg, Free State. Each of these refineries produces between 86 000 and 165 000 barrels /day. Actual current SO2 emissions from these refineries range from 24 tons/day at the Caltex refinery to 60 tons/day at the Sasolburg refinery, although in terms of SA law these refineries are permitted to emit up to 80 tons/day of SO2. These levels are well above internationally accepted standards and pose a serious health threat to neighbouring communities. Most of the communities which bear the brunt of the refineries' pollution in SA are low-income communities of colour. The SA government has consistently failed to address concerns raised by these communities that their health and well-being is being seriously compromised by the refineries' poor operating standards. groundWork, a South African non-profit organisation has been calling on the SA government to introduce legally binding air emission standards in order to bring emissions down to levels that are no longer a health threat.
Currently there are no legally binding air emission standards for refineries, merely non-binding guidelines. The SA government lacks any kind of regulatory or enforcement body such as an EPA, and instead relies heavily on self-regulation by the industries themselves. groundWork's Bobby Peek says that this self-regulation is like asking a hungry dog not to eat a piece of meat you put in front of it.
In the absence of any strong environmental laws, standards or an environmental enforcement body, groundWork believes that it is crucial that communities be given the means to monitor their own environments. The Bucket Brigade has assisted communities adjacent to polluting refineries to develop the skills and knowledge required to both monitor their environments as well as to empower them with the evidence required to push for improvements in the laws, standards and practices relating to the refinery industry in SA.
When Peek was in San Francisco in 1998 to collect his Goldman Environmental Prize, he toured local sites with Larson and Kalan. The idea of organizing a 'Bucket Brigade' in South Africa was hatched during the tour of polluting facilities. They have since worked tirelessly to make this happen. And it did in May of 2000.
Arrival of the Bucket Brigade (May 16, 2000)
Bucket Brigade visit Oil Refineries and meets city officials (May 18, 2000)
Dateline Durban: bucket brigade training and sampling (May 21, 2000)
Aloes: the ticking time-bomb! (May 23, 2000)
The Bucket Brigade briefs parliamenarians in Cape Town (May 25, 2000)
Cape Town prepares to take on Caltex Pollution (May 28, 2000)
Sasolburg: The Crude Capital of the Hinterland (May 30, 2000)
Posted by Ravi at February 20, 2004 11:36 AM