A Decision Delivered by Email
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has approved the state operating permit for Northrop Grumman’s Blue Ridge Advanced Manufacturing Center in Waynesboro, with an effective date of Sept. 30. The permit lets the plant release up to 24.9 tons a year of combined hazardous air pollutants and no more than 9.9 tons of any single compound, the same ceilings set in the draft last spring.
DEQ disclosed the decision in an email to Augusta Free Press on Friday, Oct. 2, two days after the permit took effect. The outlet’s editor, Chris Graham, has campaigned against the permit for months, and his coverage carries that stance. He reports that the agency will rely on Northrop Grumman to “maintain records of emissions data and operating parameters” as its proof of compliance, with no third-party check on those numbers.
The review ran most of a year. Northrop Grumman applied in late 2025, and DEQ took written comments through April 13. More than 200 residents then requested a public hearing, and DEQ held one at the Waynesboro High School auditorium on July 23. More than 50 speakers addressed the agency over nearly three hours.
DEQ then designated it a controversial permit under state law, which brought a second hearing on Sept. 15. The rules for that night were tight. Only people who had already commented could speak, and their remarks had to address DEQ’s written summary of earlier comments. The notice put it bluntly: “No new information will be accepted at the hearing.”
Northrop Grumman has said little in public beyond a written statement. The company told WHSV that “we expect our actual emissions to be much lower than the cap,” and called itself committed to being a responsible neighbor.
City leaders have not spoken with one voice. Augusta Free Press reports that City Council member Jim Wood, who is seeking reelection to the Ward D seat, compared the plant’s emissions to exhaust from interstate traffic. Waynesboro has no authority over air emissions, which fall to the state.
Radar Parts Next to a Water Supply
Northrop Grumman broke ground in 2024 on the 315,000-square-foot plant on Shenandoah Village Drive, behind Waynesboro Town Center. The site covers 87 acres and could employ up to 330 people at full capacity. Workers there will build radars, communication antennas and electronic warfare systems, and the plant is set to open later this year.
The permit sets limits on three solvents used in coating work: methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK), toluene and xylene. DEQ classifies the plant as a synthetic minor source, which means enforceable caps hold it below the federal threshold for a major polluter. DEQ spokesperson Irina Calos told The News Leader the permit keeps solvent emissions under the state’s exemption thresholds for toxic air pollutants, and handles odors from polysulfides with a daily use limit and a charcoal adsorption system, according to Virginia Business.
Geography drives much of the worry. The company’s property line runs against Coyner Springs Park, 145 acres of woods, fields and springs that feed the city’s water supply. Waynesboro’s water treatment plant sits inside that park and draws from two wells and a freshwater spring.
What the Research Says About the Solvents
The three compounds are common industrial solvents, found in paints, thinners and gasoline as well as factory coating lines. People take them in mostly by breathing the vapor.
Federal toxicologists treat toluene and xylene chiefly as nervous system hazards. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry says toluene may affect the nervous system and can cause headaches, and that studies of workers and animals generally show it does not cause cancer. The agency lists effects on the brain from xylene at high levels, and reports no health effects at the background levels most people breathe every day.
Some of the research reaches further. A 2020 meta-analysis in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health found a significant association between workplace solvent exposure and multiple sclerosis across several studies. A 2012 review in PLOS ONE tied solvent exposure to several autoimmune diseases, MS among them.
Both reviews drew on people who handled solvents on the job, often for years. Living near a plant that runs under a permit cap is a different exposure, and the research does not translate neatly from one setting to the other. That gap between workplace science and neighborhood air sits at the center of the push for independent monitoring. Residents want measured numbers at the fence line.
Bethpage, Rocket Center and the South River
Holly Frost has lived in Waynesboro since 1987, about 1.5 miles from the new plant. She grew up near a toxic groundwater plume in Bethpage, N.Y., left behind by the same company.
Grumman, later Northrop Grumman, built aircraft at Bethpage on Long Island for about 60 years, until 1996, beside a Navy facility that researched and assembled aircraft. The plume underneath, discovered in the 1970s, holds 24 contaminants and spreads across nearly seven square miles. In December 2020, New York reached a $406 million cleanup plan with the company and the Navy, a 30-year containment project that Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the largest deal of its kind in state history. Northrop Grumman’s own share included a $104.4 million natural resource damages settlement, with money set aside for well protection in two local water districts.
The air above Bethpage has become its own legal fight, and it bears most directly on a permit about emissions. Plaintiffs in a federal class action say a 1987 company filing with the EPA showed the plant released more than 500,000 pounds of trichloroethylene and 300 pounds of hexavalent chromium into the air, both known carcinogens. Experts hired by those plaintiffs put the cancer risk for people living near the plant at 760 in 1 million, against the EPA’s benchmark of 1 in 1 million, according to Napoli Shkolnik, the law firm leading the suit. That figure comes from one side of active litigation, and no court or health agency has adopted it.
State health officials have reached more cautious conclusions so far. A 2013 New York State Department of Health evaluation found no elevated cancer rates near the site, though it noted that people diagnosed closest to it were relatively young. The department has since begun an updated study, and it has cautioned that neither report can link specific cancer cases to the plume.
A second case sits closer to home, in West Virginia. In 2021, Alliant Techsystems Operations, a Northrop Grumman subsidiary that runs the Navy-owned Allegany Ballistics Laboratory near Keyser, W.Va., agreed to pay a $350,000 penalty to settle alleged violations covering hazardous waste handling, its Clean Air Act permit and its water discharge permit.
Neither case maps cleanly onto Waynesboro. Bethpage grew out of decades of waste disposal under far weaker rules, and the Keyser lab makes rocket motors and propellants. The Waynesboro permit governs air emissions from coating electronics. Residents cite both anyway, as reasons to verify the company’s numbers rather than take them on faith.
Waynesboro also carries its own memory. The DuPont plant dumped mercury into the South River from the 1930s to the 1950s, and the metal still turns up in fish and snakes today. At least one speaker at the September hearing invoked the South River directly, arguing that preventing contamination beats cleaning it up.
Who Checks the Numbers
The permit’s oversight rests on the company’s own records. DEQ answered critics of that setup in a document last month, writing that the permit’s monitoring, recordkeeping and reporting meet regulatory standards, Augusta Free Press reported. In other words, the agency required what the rules require and stopped there.
That answer has not satisfied a long list of residents. Hundreds have written, demonstrated and spoken to DEQ since spring, and Vice Mayor Lorie Jean Akanbi is among those calling for an outside company to track the plant’s emissions, a step DEQ has rejected.
Some residents have stopped waiting. The Valley Environmental Justice Alliance has started its own water testing at four sites in Coyner Springs Park, next to the plant. Samples taken before production starts would give residents something to compare against later.
Where Residents Go From Here
The permit is final, and the plant will open. A few avenues remain open for people who live near it.
Report what you smell. DEQ’s Valley Regional Office takes odor and emissions complaints through its Air Compliance Manager at (540) 217-7480. With company records as the only routine check, a documented trail of public complaints gives regulators something independent to weigh.
Talk to your doctor before production starts. Residents with asthma or other conditions that solvent vapors can aggravate can ask their physicians to note their current health in writing. A baseline on record makes later changes easier to document.
Take the monitoring question to Richmond. DEQ has said the permit meets current regulations. Residents who want independent air monitoring near plants like this one can press their delegates and state senators to fund it or write it into state rules.
Watch the water. The Valley Environmental Justice Alliance’s testing in Coyner Springs Park, along with the city’s own water quality reports, will offer the clearest early signal if anything changes near the plant’s property line.