HARPER'S FERRY, W.Va. - More than 100,000 homes, businesses and hospitals in nine counties around Charleston, W. Va., are without water due to a chemical leak into the Elk River, which serves as a primary drinking water source for an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 people. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin announced a state of emergency today, banning the use of water except to flush toilets or put out fires in some of the counties. President Barack Obama issued an emergency declaration for the state, triggering immediate federal aid to the residents. Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state Air National Guard were coordinating efforts to get water to the affected area.
The West Virginia legislature has been shutdown. Schools had been ordered closed today in Kanawha, Putnam, Boone, Jackson, Clay and Lincoln counties as of last night. Effects of consuming the chemical were described as severe vomiting, skin rashes, and possible fatality. Wastewater treatment officials had little knowledge of the leaked chemical and were cautious predicting its health impact in the water supply.
A state Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson said, the chemical, known as "4-methylcyclohexane methanol," is a "sudsing agent" and used in the processing of coal.
Hours after water company officials said their treatment facility -- which is near the leak site on the Elk River -- could handle the leak, the governor announced, "Nobody really knows how dangerous it could be. However, it is in the system. It's just so important, according to the health department, as well as [the water company]: Please don't drink, don't wash with, don't do anything with the water."
Freedom Industries, a chemical manufacturer for mining, steel and cement industries, is responsible for the spill. DEP investigators discovered the chemical was leaking from the bottom of a storage tank, and had overwhelmed a concrete dike meant to serve as "secondary containment" around the tank after receiving complaints of a strange odor. The chemical "was going over the hill into the river," according to Mike Dorsey, director of emergency response and homeland security for the state DEP. Dorsey told the Charleston Gazette, "Apparently, it had been leaking for some time. We just don't know how long."
Freedom Industries had not "self-reported" the leak to regulatory agencies as required by law and have made no public comment so far.
Ironically, just two days after what editorial writers called an "uplifting State of the State" address to the opening of the West Virginia legislature, the governor vowed to not "back down" in fighting the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to enforce the Clean Water Act for mountaintop removal (http://www.peoplesworld.org/the-people-versus-massey-energy/) mining operations. He also announced a billion dollar construction project on a modern "cracker" plant for processing shale gas from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) drilling (http://www.peoplesworld.org/poisoned-water-endangered-turtles-the-shell-shocking-effects-of-fracking/).
After the announcement that no water should be used to drink, cook or wash with, residents swarmed grocery stores, convenience stores and anywhere else with bottled water and shelves were quickly depleted. Fistfights erupted over water in a local Walmart.
It is not clear how much flushing of water pipes will be required to rid the system of the toxic chemical. The WV-DEP spokesperson said, "It could take some time ... to get the system flushed clean because some of these pipes go out as far as 60 miles."
Water was being transported into the affected counties, and emergency officials said they planned to set up distribution centers. The Charleston Gazette reported that Col. Mike Cadle at the state Air National Guard said 51 tractor-trailers loaded with water were headed to West Virginia from a Federal Emergency Management Agency facility in Maryland. A cargo aircraft was sent to Martinsburg, W. Va., near western Maryland, to pick up the water and fly it back to Yeager Airport in Charleston.
Photo:A customer gets the last few bottles of water at the Kroger in South Charleston W.Va. after being told to not drink water supplied by West Virginia American Water. Tyler Evert /AP



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More environmental injustice, poor WV is the home of a large number of plants that you would not have in your back yard. Environmental degradation to the point of endangering human sustanance, dangerous jobs for insufficient pay, Appalachia has long been a colony of US capitalism.

I still am not clear on the purpose of this substance, , it is used for cleaning the coal, but to what purpose, environmental purpose or industrial effiency? Heard some clown on the radio implying that this wouldn't have happened but for the demand for 'clean coal'.

In any case coal use must be massively reduced and this will mean the end of a lot of jobs. Capitalism, if it addresses this at all will trash the workers as it trashes the land. We will do better.

Again and again, workplace safety advocates interviewed by Working In These Times on Tuesday cited a single cause of why such efforts die on the vine: media amnesia. Once a disaster is over, reporters turn their attention away from such unsexy topics as chemical plant safety, and industries lobby for regulatory changes to be killed in the dark.

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/16117/mistakes_of_west_texas_repeated_in_west_virginia/

"Media amnesia", you gotta be kidding me. That's the best they can do? It is capitalism, in every step and in myriad aspects which has got us to this point. It has for sure facilitated the production process but the costs in human suffering and long term damage to human sustenance continue to mount. Stupid, facile arguments like this only divert attention from the ultimate culprit, this the comfort zone of the Philistine.

Why So Many West Virginians Relied on Water from the Elk River: Industry Already Polluted the Others


BY NORA CAPLAN-BRICKER @ncaplanbricker
Share When a faulty storage tank flooded West Virginia’s Elk River with a coal-processing chemical last Thursday, it left more than 300,000 people without access to water they could safely use to drink, cook, bathe—anything other than to flush the toilet. Sixteen percent of the state’s population was stranded. But just a decade ago, the number would have been far smaller.

The coal industry, which is behind the spill, is also responsible for the scope of its impact: The Elk River branch of the state’s largest water utility, West Virginia American Water, has gained up to 100,000 customers since the mid-2000s, according to the estimate of environmental consultant Rob Goodwin. That’s because mountain top removal and the disposal of coal mining waste (buried underground in a muddy form called slurry) have contaminated local water sources throughout the state’s southern and central regions, driving more and more West Virginians to board up their wells and lay pipe to the Elk River.

“It’s really an extra smack in the face to these community members, when they already did not have safe water due to this same chemical and others being leaked from coal slurry,” said Johanna de Graffenreid, coordinator for the CARE Campaign.

The state’s dependence on the Elk reveals the dark side to its reliance on the energy industry. “The coal industry holds sway over elected politicians,” said Bill Price of the Sierra Club. “They just push the legislature around.” Companies with expansive holdings in the state poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into politics in the off-year of 2013 alone, as the Center for Responsive Politics has documented. (Alliance Resource Partners: $424,000; Alpha Natural Resources: $244,975, and so on.) There are currently 17 coal industry lobbyists registered in West Virginia, according to the Sierra Club.

It’s almost impossible to pass safety regulations that would cut into the industry’s profits, creating a political climate in which the facility holding the ruptured tank had gone without inspection since 1991—without breaking the law. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection said the company in question, Freedom Industries, didn’t even need a permit because it stores chemicals rather than producing them.

After a chemical plant exploded in 2008, killing two, The New York Times held an investigation of regulation in the state. As the paper recalled Monday, the reporters

found that hundreds of workplaces in West Virginia had violated pollution laws without paying fines. In interviews at the time, current and former West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection employees said their enforcement efforts had been undermined by bureaucratic disorganization; a departmental preference to let polluters escape punishment if they promised to try harder; and a revolving door of regulators who left for higher-paying jobs at the companies they once policed.

In recent years, environmental activists have given up on state agencies, circumventing them for the federal government. In 2009, four groups petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to take over for the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, writing, “The state’s capitulation to the industries it is obligated to regulate under the Clean Water Act and its resulting failure to enforce or maintain its [National Pollution Discharge Elimination System] program leave EPA no choice but to withdraw its approval of that program.” That request went unheeded, but this summer another environmental coalition tried again, petitioning the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, part of the Department of the Interior.

Meanwhile, lawsuits over water contamination have sprung up in southern communities where mining is concentrated—areas that sit on the Elk River, downstream of Thursday’s spill. Residents sue to force the county or the coal company to pay for the pipes that must connect them to West Virginia American after their wells become unfit to drink from. The Coal River, a former water source for southern counties, is now a regular fixture on the list of America’s most-endangered rivers.

Writing about a settlement last June in the town of Seth in Boone County, Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward Jr. noted: “West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection officials have said they have not found connections between slurry disposal and contaminated water, but a review by West Virginia University researchers said the DEP had required inadequate monitoring over the years to allow any real conclusions.” Ironically, this slurry often contains 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or MCHM, the chemical now flowing through the Elk.

It may be difficult for the residents of one of America’s poorest states to see their way out of this bad marriage with the coal industry. “I think people feel like we have to make sacrifices to our water quality in order to keep our coal jobs,” said Angela Rosser of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. But as this week’s calamity demonstrates, the state is stuck in a catch-22: The more water it sacrifices to industry, the more vulnerable it becomes to the riskiness of coal.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Johanna de Graffenreid's employer.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116206/west-virginia-chemical-spill-sullied-one-states-last-clean-rivers

The question which is not raised is 'would coal be king if capital were not emperor?'

The river might stink but the capitalist owner will come out of this smelling like a rose




Company responsible for West Virginia water crisis files for bankruptcy

January 17, 2014 |4:46PM ET

The Freedom Industries chemical plant is shown after a leak at the facility sent chemicals into the Elk River near Charleston, West Virginia, Jan. 10, 2014.Lisa Hechesky/ReutersFreedom Industries, the company blamed for a chemical spill that left 300,000 West Virginians without safe drinking water over last week, filed for bankruptcy on Friday.

Freedom Industries is facing multiple lawsuits and state and federal investigations after the Jan. 9 spill. It filed a bankruptcy petition with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of West Virginia.

Company president Gary Southern signed the paperwork, which lists the company's assets and liabilities as a range between $1 million and $10 million. It says the company has at least 200 creditors and owes its top 20 creditors $3.66 million.

As a result of the leak, vendors have demanded Freedom pay in cash, draining the company of financing and prompting it to seek bankruptcy, according to documents filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Charleston, West Virginia.

"Likewise, the defense of the numerous suits filed against the debtor will exhaust the debtor's liquidity," Freedom said in a court filing. The bankruptcy filing will put a stay on more than 20 lawsuits filed against the company over the spill.

The company filed an emergency motion seeking court authority to borrow an initial $4 million from WV Funding LLC.

Water in the Elk River was tainted after a chemical used to process coal leaked from a storage tank and then a containment area at a facility owned by Freedom Industries. The facility is mere miles up river from West Virginia’s largest water utility.

The bankruptcy document says the leaky storage tank appears to have been pierced through its base by some sort of object. It also says a current theory for the hole is that a local water line that broke near the Charleston plant could have made the ground beneath the storage tank freeze in the cold days before the spill.

After the spill, residents in a nine-county area around the state capital of Charleston were told not to use the water for anything other than flushing toilets. Some businesses and schools were forced to close for several days. The water restrictions have since been lifted for most residents, but many believe the water is still contaminated.

The terminal that leaked had not been inspected by state officials since 2001, when it was owned by a different company operating under more stringent rules. State officials said Freedom Industries bought the terminal last month.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/17/company-responsibleforwestvirginiawatercrisisfilesforbankruptcy.html

http://images.sodahead.com/polls/000824249/polls_GomerSurprise_1140_696117_answer_1_xlarge.jpeg

The West Virginia Democratic Party controls all but one (Attorney General) statewide executive offices and holds a slim majority in the West Virginia House of Delegates and a supermajority in the West Virginia Senate. Democrats hold both of the state's U.S. Senate seats and one of the state's three U.S. House seats.

To measure success of a party, one looks at the extent and depth of the party's electoral success. Out of all the 121 terms of statewide office that have been regularly elected since 1932, only seven were lost by the Democrats. Three of those seven terms were won by the same person, Arch A. Moore Jr. Moore Jr. is the only Republican candidate from West Virginia to fare well in state and national office races. Since 1930, Democrats have held majorities in both chambers of the West Virginia Legislature.

West Virginia voters almost always prefer the Democratic candidate for national offices. They have sent only two Republicans to the U.S. Senate, one in 1942 and the other in 1956. Out of the 168 contests for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1932 and 1994, Republicans have won just twenty-three times. Six of those victories were secured by Arch A. Moore Jr. The people have voted for a Democratic President in every election except 1956, 1972, and 1984. Since the 2000 election however, Republican candidates for president have enjoyed electoral victories in the state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Democratic_Party

SWEARINGEN: My family, most of them, were coal miners. My grandfather was a coal miner. My stepdad was a coal miner. My uncles. And here there is so much propaganda and I’ve been taught all my life. It’s almost like a coal worship. That coal makes this state is what I was always thought. And then I started seeing what coal really did for my family, when I seen my grandfather die of black lung and my stepdad got heart disease.

My father passed away. He was a coal miner, but he got cancer too because he was a veteran and was exposed to chemicals in Korea. And then I see my uncles. They’re sick and they have black lungs. I was really proud of their sacrifices and then I woke up one day, as a mom, and I started seeing the mountains being blown up around us. I took for granted that they would always be there.

When I was a little girl, it was the most pristine and beautiful waters in the world. I took that for granted because now the creeks like I said run black and orange. So I decided coal didn’t define me. I was a proud Appalachian woman and I had the choice. I had the choice of having coal pride or being a mother and I decided I was going to be a mother and take responsibility for my children. And that’s the thing here.

Our politicians, I mean, we have no leadership. A lot of people say we have the best politicians the coal industry can buy and that’s true because we have no support for our people. It’s total disregard for public health and safety. This industry runs Appalachia now and people are just discarded. We’re not treated like human beings. And then it’s people worrying about a job. There’s always a threat of them losing their job and if they stand up against the irresponsibility of the coal industry they’re not even allowed to work in the industry anymore. They’re pretty much blacklisted.

They have total control over us and I wish people in America would recognize that we feel like we live in a human sacrifice zone. When you turn on your lights, people need to think about that’s the blood of my people. That’s the blood of my children. People are dying here at an alarming rate.

I mean, I just don’t know what to say. I never thought that I would have to experience anything like this in my lifetime and I never knew that I would have to struggle for basic human rights for my children.

http://raniakhalek.com/2014/01/19/west-va-mother-we-live-in-a-human-sacrifice-zone/

Bolded for ugly truth

New water fears close West Virginia schools

(CNN) -- The lingering smell of licorice closed several schools around Charleston, West Virginia, on Thursday, nearly a month after a chemical spill that left more than a quarter million people without water.

The unscheduled holidays underscore ongoing public concern about whether the water is safe to drink after a methanol compound leaked from a tank farm upstream from Charleston. Though state and federal officials tried to reassure residents this week, "We are still getting feedback that there is a level of worry," said Laura Jordan, a spokeswoman for West Virginia American Water, the local water company.

Jordan said the licorice odor given off by the chemical -- 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, known as MCHM -- is so strong that it can be picked up even if there is no detectable amount in the water.

The chemical, used to clean coal to reduce ash, leaked into the Elk River and from there into Charleston's water supply on January 9. The result was a do-not-use order that left about 300,000 people in the area unable to drink or bathe in their water, some for more than a week.

An elementary and high school located about 15 miles downstream from the January spill closed early Wednesday and stayed closed Thursday because of renewed complaints about the licorice smell, said Liza Cordeiro, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education. The complaints came as the schools were trying to flush their water lines to get rid of discolored water after a main broke nearby, she said.

One high school student went to a hospital after complaining of burning eyes, and a teacher there was taken to the hospital after fainting, Cordeiro said. School administrators dismissed the students soon after 9 a.m., she said.

Meanwhile, a grade school in Charleston was closed early Thursday after the licorice smell came out of a dishwasher, the Kanawha County School District reported. Two other schools were closed as well, the district said.

Jordan said some smell and discoloration can be expected as water lines are flushed out. But she added, "It doesn't mean there is any health risk involved."

"We're pushing it out and getting rid of any trace," she said.

An independent water test conducted at CNN's request found trace levels of MCHM earlier this week, both in untreated river water and in tap water from two homes in Charleston. The amounts range from less than half a part per billion to 1.6 parts per billion -- well below the safe level of 1 part per million set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Whether that level is safe has been disputed.

Dr. Tanja Popovic, the director of the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health, told reporters Wednesday that repeated testing shows the water is safe.

"What I can say is that with all the scientific evidence that we have, with everything that numerous people have worked on so far, I can say that you can use your water however you like," Popovic said. "You can drink it, you can bathe in it, you can use it how you like."

And Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said tests have shown levels of less than 10 parts per billion or too low to detect. Tomblin said he and his staff have been drinking the water "for the last couple of weeks." But when asked whether he could declare it "100% safe," he said, "No."

"The only thing that we can rely upon is what the experts tell us, and, you know, for all the tests done that's who we've got to depend upon," he said.

A federal grand jury is probing the spill at Freedom Industries, the storage facility at the source of leak, sources familiar with the grand jury's activities told CNN this week.

The spill was originally estimated at about 7,500 gallons, but Freedom Industries reported in late January that about 10,000 gallons of chemical had escaped. The company also told regulators that in addition to the methanol compound that escaped from a ruptured tank, a second chemical -- a mix of polyglycol ethers, known as PPH -- was part of the leak.

PPH is not believed to pose any new health hazard for the people of Charleston,but the state environmental agency said failing to accurately report the makeup of the leak is a violation of state law.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/06/us/west-virginia-chemical-spill/

Fact is they don't really know what the health effects of these or thousands of other chemicals are, other than that they don't kill people too obviously. Which is good enough for the company lawyers. Can't tie up the capitalist machine with red tape, don't ya like 'progress'?

"We are still getting feedback that there is a level of worry,"

Level of worry? Ya think?

If the "company" is saying "10,000 gallons of chemical had escaped", then you can bet on double or triple that.


PPH is not believed to pose any new health hazard

Goddamn them...

Awareness seeps into the popular conciousness....

http://assets.amuniversal.com/6ed9277077120131f83c005056a9545d