South Philly Review

The neighborhood around Newkirk Street and Passyunk Avenue offers a scenic view of the Sunoco Refinery. It's next door to the towering scaffolding of a defunct natural gas container, and it's a hop, skip and a jump from the city's Southwest sewage treatment plant.

Last Thursday, environmentalists thought it would be the perfect location to release their report on the chemicals their tests detected in the air in South and Southwest Philly.

"For years these residents have had to bear a disproportionate amount of pollution in their backyard," said Christine Knapp, program organizer for Clean Water Action, which produced the study with fellow nonprofit group Clean Water Fund and members of the Community Labor Refinery Tracking Committee.

In the past year, these organizations have conducted air quality tests nine times using the EPA-approved air-sampling devices of the Bucket Brigade, a neighborhood-based group of residents who take air tests and then ship them to California for analysis.

Knapp reported that 54 volatile organic chemicals were detected: Seven were known carcinogens, like benzene; 12 were suspected cancer-causing agents, like the gas additive MTBE; 16 were respiratory irritants; and 21 were known to affect the nervous system.

"According to publicly available data," Knapp said, "the Sunoco Refinery releases the largest source of toxic air pollutants in Philadelphia, emitting at least 32 different chemicals."

But it is not just the oil refinery she blames for the pollution. Knapp also pointed to nearby trash-transfer stations, auto body shops, dry cleaners, sewage treatment facilities, junkyards, chemical plants and the two major highways surrounding South and Southwest Philly.

Knapp called for the Health Department's Air Management Services to enforce the existing air-quality standards and to punish those polluters who violate them.

Denny Larson, coordinator for the national Refinery Reform Campaign, said the "[regulatory] agencies and companies have built an elaborate house of cards, an illusion that companies are being monitored, that air pollution is being controlled."

Larson, a native of Montana, participated in a tour last year of Philadelphia's biggest polluters that began outside the Sunoco Refinery, 31st Street and Passyunk Avenue. He also created the Bucket Brigade eight years ago and has organized environmentally concerned citizens in several areas of the country since then.

The neighbors with the modified buckets, he contended, "are the only people out there monitoring the air."

The Health Department actually funds the Bucket Brigade through a $10,000 grant.

"The Bucket Brigade augments what we do," said Health Department spokesperson Jeff Moran. Results from the tests are submitted to the department for analysis, he said.

AMS operates four fixed-site air-monitoring stations in the city: in the Northeast, Northwest Philly, Center City and Southwest Philly at 60th Street and Elmwood Avenue. There are plans to add a fifth site somewhere in South Philly, Moran said.

"We agree with the tracking committee that there are toxic air contaminants of concern to the city," Moran said. The city is working on an initiative to control emissions from diesel-engine vehicles, he added.

Sunoco, meanwhile, downplayed the results of the Bucket Brigade.

"Certainly we respect the Bucket Brigade's right to take their own samples," said Sunoco spokesperson Gerald Davis. "We do effective monitoring, and we are in compliance with the rules and regulatory guidelines we have."

Joanne Rossi, president of the Refinery Tracking Committee, feels the oil refinery's management should take the initiative to go beyond minimum requirements when it comes to the environment.