It’s a steaming hot August morning, and a woman and her dog are enjoying some shade at Coyner Springs Park in Waynesboro. The woman, who didn’t want us to use her name to protect her privacy, meets friends here most days.
“Puggles. My dog, yeah,” said the woman, who recently worked as a security guard in nearby Fishersville. “Yeah, because we live in an apartment, you know? And this dog park has been here forever.”
There’s been a lot of talk at the park lately, she says, about the nearby Northrop Grumman manufacturing facility which has applied for state permits that would allow it to release up to 24.9 tons of volatile organic compounds each year, including MIBK, toluene, and xylenes, used in solvents, adhesives, and coatings.
“I was born and raised here at the old Waynesboro hospital, lived here my whole life, and just to see something like this come in is just scary,” the woman said. “So it makes you worry. You know, it’s a lot. They’re talking about tons of pollution coming in; that’s a lot. So, who knows the long term health effects on that, down the road?”
Northrop Grumman’s property line nestles against Coyner Springs Park, 145 acres of woods, fields, and streams that feed the city’s municipal water supply. If the company gets the permit, it’ll begin building electrical components for aerospace and defense machinery using what it says are safe, proven methods to capture most of the emissions it generates.
Northrop Grumman, the world’s fourth largest defense company that posted $41 billion in revenue in 2025, says it can be trusted to track its own pollution. Some Shenandoah Valley residents, though, don’t buy it. They remember when the city’s DuPont plant drained mercury-laden wastewater into the South River, where it’s still present in fish and snakes today.
“They can still do it if there’s nobody standing over top of them to make sure they’re not,” explained Carrie Eheart.
Stuart’s Draft resident Carrie Eheart grew up in Waynesboro. She’s part of an opposition group demanding Northrop Grumman’s permit be denied—or, next best, that Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality requires it to pay an outside company to track its emissions and issue public reports.
“There’s so many hands in this and so many really strong minds that are going to say, ‘No, you’re on notice,’” Eheart said. “So, don’t just think because you’ve gotten the permit that this is over, because it won’t be over. You know, not for the ones of us, even if we’re up in age, the ones of us that can do this, and maybe pass it on to others, because we have some young people in this group, and it’s important that people keep fighting, because we’re losing it, unfortunately. And, when you don’t care that you pollute, you lose a lot of things. Not just the air. Everything below it goes, too, so, once it’s done, it’s done.”
Some argue the company should have revealed its pollution plans before moving to town. It’s now been more than two and a half years since they broke ground. The fact that Northrop Grumman’s leasing the 315,000 square-foot property clouds things further.
After a packed community meeting in July, DEQ issued a lengthy written response. Eheart’s group plans to speak at Waynesboro City Council’s Sept. 14 meeting and show up at DEQ’s next community meeting Sept. 15 at the Waynesboro High School auditorium, too.
In a statement, Northrop Grumman officials wouldn’t say if they’d attend either event but said they “expect [their] actual emissions to be much lower than the [24.9 tons a year] cap.”
“Northrop Grumman is committed to being a responsible neighbor,” the company said.
DEQ officials say they’ll announce their decision on the operating permit by October 22.
