HOPEWELL, VA — The bucket brigade is coming to the city, but there’s no fire.  Specially-outfitted buckets will collect air quality samples as part of a new study on how Hopewell’s industry affects the air.

Hopewell — historically packed with heavy industry — is a great place to live, Jim Gould said.

A city native, Gould returned to town after graduating from the University of Virginia to oversee the Sierra Club’s community-based project.

Hopewell has the second-highest toxic air pollution in the state, second only to neighboring Chesterfield County.

“The vitality of the people depends on large industry,” Gould said at a club meeting last night. “We’re coming in to empower the people,” not attack the manufacturing plants, he said.


Christina Luman-Bailey, Ward 1 councilwoman, said the Hopewell Downtown Partnership worked with the environmental group last summer on educational programs and activities.

“This is all positive,” she said. “It’s focused on improving our environment and the health of our citizens.”

Hopewell will receive four buckets from Global Community Monitoring, a group that has conducted similar work in other areas.

During episodes of strong smells or other problems, volunteers would hook a vacuum cleaner up to a special bucket to suck an air sample into a lung-sized plastic bag. After signing legal paperwork that they haven’t tampered with the air, the bags are sent to a laboratory for testing, Gould explained. Scientists can detect 89 chemical compounds, far more than the Environment Protection Agency requires.

In a brief video at yesterday’s meeting, a team of bucket volunteers in Louisiana found that a vinyl siding plant was leaving substantial amounts of toxic compounds in the air.

The air samples would be combined with a non-scientific pollution log asking people what they smell, see and feel during air quality problem times.

Glen Besa, director of the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter, said the EPA funded an ongoing study of the city’s air. Three monitoring stations across the city are collecting data now. The two programs can work together, he said.

Clint Strong said the city’s manufacturing plants used to have citizen “nose patrols” that would alert them to strange smells, which plant managers would try to identify.

Global Community Monitoring representatives will conduct training in late June.

• Patrick Kane may be reached at 722-5155 or pkane@progress-index.com.

(Read MORE About Hopewell's Chemical Past and Future)