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:: 7.24.2003 ::
From Passing the Bucket - How the five-gallon plastic bucket came to the aid of grassroots environmentalists - by Michelle Nijhuis of Grist Magazine: Back in 1994, several years before Erin Brockovich and her boss Edward Masry saw their life stories reenacted on the big screen, Masry was representing a group of citizens from Rodeo, Calif., on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay. His clients lived near a Unocal oil refinery, and they were worried: They'd recently endured a major release of a refinery catalyst called catacarb, which had coated their neighborhoods with sticky goo. Hundreds of them had already gotten sick, and they'd been noticing odd smells around the Unocal site. "We realized there was no way for the people to monitor what was coming out of the refinery," says Masry.
So Masry inaugurated his own monitoring program. He called up an environmental engineering firm and asked them to redesign the standard air-sampling device -- known as a Summa canister, a stainless-steel unit that costs about $2,000 -- into a cheap and accurate tool that private citizens could use. The engineers' solution? The good old five-gallon bucket.
:: Deb 3:05 PM :: permalink ::
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