Tag: Energy & Environment

State Senate Majority Leader: Governor's Bill Shields Chemical Industry

A West Virginia Senate leader thinks the governor’s proposal to prevent chemical spills caters to industry interests.
 

Senate Majority Leader John Unger says Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s bill doesn’t do enough to register and inspect above-ground storage tanks.
 
     Tomblin’s measure responds to Freedom Industries’ Jan. 9 spill, which contaminated the water supply for 300,000 people.
 
     Unger took issue with Tomblin’s bill on Tuesday because it regulates just above-ground tanks deemed too close to a water supply. It also would only regulate sites holding chemicals above a certain risk level.
 
     Unger is proposing regulation of all above-ground tanks.
 
     Unger says all of the state’s water needs to be protected. He says sites far from public water systems need to be regulated, since people in rural areas rely on wells using groundwater.

Downstream Strategies: New Regulations Are Only First Step to Prevent Future Spills

Downstream Strategies President Evan Hansen has worked on a report called "The Freedom Industries Spill: Lessons Learned and Needed Reforms." Hansen says…

Downstream Strategies President Evan Hansen has worked on a report called “The Freedom Industries Spill: Lessons Learned and Needed Reforms.” Hansen says new regulations on storage facilities, like the one involved in the Elk River spill, are only a first step towards prevention.

Hansen also suggests:

  • Additional funding to the state Department of Environmental Protection, to add staff to its enforcement ranks;
  • A harsh tone from the state government on all extraction industries, that lax enforcement and shoddy storage won’t be tolerated,
  • A reformation of the permitting system, which includes holding storage facilities to more stringent permits, that would require public comment.

A copy of this report is now available.

Last 'Do Not Use' Water Restrictions Lifted

 The “do not use” order has been lifted for the last customer area in West Virginia American Water’s Kanawha Valley district. Customers in the Clendenin area may begin flushing according to the established guidelines.
 
Although the online map currently reflects that all areas have  turned blue, customers should  keep in mind that precautionary boil water advisories are in place for several smaller groups of customers throughout the district after water storage tanks were depleted following excessive flushing activities. A list  of boil water advisories currently in effect can be found on line on West Virginia American Water’s website. 
 

If It's Good Enough to Wash Coal, Is It Good Enough to Wash Me?

“If it’s good enough to wash coal, it’s good enough to wash me.” That’s a tweet that supposedly went out from the West Virginia Coal Association in…

“If it’s good enough to wash coal, it’s good enough to wash me.” That’s a tweet that supposedly went out from the West Virginia Coal Association in response to the Elk River chemical spill. No such remark exists on the association’s feed today, but the sentiment sparked reactions from many, including one southern W.Va. health campaign. In the aftermath of the MCHM spill, they’re bringing up questions about certain coal mining practices.

Beckley native Bo Webb is the Campaign Director of the Appalachian Community Health Emergency campaign (ACHE). His hope is that the Elk River chemical spill will bring much needed attention to communities where chemicals like MCHM are regularly used.

“Those of us who live in Mountain Top Removal areas, we’ve been putting up with and dealing with these toxins for years,” Webb says.

For Immediate Release – Jan. 14, 2014 Appalachian Community Health Emergency campaign responds to W.Va. chemical disaster Contacts:  Bo Webb, ACHE coordinator Bob Kincaid, ACHE campaign Naoma, W.Va.—“If it’s good enough to wash coal, it’s good enough to wash me.”  With that dismissive tweet regarding the ongoing disaster in which the public water supply of 300,000 people was poisoned, the West Virginia Coal Association demonstrated once again the disdain in which they hold the health and well-being of the people of West Virginia.   4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol (MCHM) is used in the coal preparation process. Leaking thousands of gallons of MCHM into the Elk River, Freedom Industries of Charleston, W.Va. poisoned the water supply of hundreds of thousands of West Virginians late last week. It was the first time most people outside the coal business had ever heard of the chemical, but MCHM is used every day in the mountaintop removal coal mining process.   MCHM’s daily use in Central Appalachia’s mining communities is done with no warning to residents. A number of toxins, including MCHM and others even worse, are used in processing coal, many of which are pumped into multi-billion gallon storage lakes of toxic waste that loom above communities like Whitesville, W.Va., hidden behind faulty, sometimes leaky, otherwise frightful earthen dams. A similar dam gave way killing 125 people and leaving 4,000 homeless in the February 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster. The current 7,500-gallon spill would be dwarfed by a dam break on any one of these multi-billion gallon ponds.   “The federal water emergency in nine West Virginia counties is putting people's lives and health in immediate danger.  But that is just one small part of the larger story of mountaintop removal coal mining and the devastating impact it has on the land, water, lives and health of the people in the region,” said Bo Webb, Appalachia Community Health Emergency Act (ACHE Act) campaign coordinator.  “Mountaintop removal coal mining is creating a broad public health emergency in the regions where it is practiced. That is the untold story.”   As a result of mountaintop removal coal mining, Americans in Central Appalachia’s Mountaintop Removal Zone suffer a wide variety of diseases far in excess of the rates at which they are suffered in the general population.  Communities near mountaintop removal have a 42% higher rate of birth defects, 4,000 excess deaths per year, up to twice the cancer rate, and higher rates of heart, lung, and other diseases.   The ACHE Act, HR 526 in the US House of Representatives, seeks to break the silence on what is poisoning innocent people living near mountaintop removal sites and their associated plants and processes.  “I hope people will finally see how badly we need the ACHE Act,” noted Bob Kincaid of the ACHE campaign. “It’s the only law in Congress that would help people learn what kind of toxins they live with in mountaintop removal areas. We deserve to know what is poisoning us. We deserve to have it stopped.”

The ACHE campaign formed a year ago in January when organizers decided the only way to address health disparities related to Mountain Top Removal mining was to focus legislative efforts at the federal level. Since then they’ve been working on the ACHE Act designed to help protect communities trying to coexist with industry.

“There are 4,000 excess deaths per year in counties that produce coal by the mountain top removal method,” Webb says. “To me that’s alarming given that there’s only approximately 7,000 workers on these sites.”

Webb points to multiple peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate significant health disparities in communities in and around large surface mining operations saying that there’s been significant resistance from legislators in acknowledging the findings—acknowledgement that might lead to a better understanding of industrial practices. Webb says slurry impoundments are not least among them.

“According to the DEP, these dams are designed to seep. Imagine that,” he says. “So if they’re seeping, they are seeping the liquids. And we know of numerous chemicals in there. This is a real brew of toxins that are in these dams.”

In fact, he worries that the very regulations enforced to “scrub coal clean” may be inadvertently adding dangerous chemicals to the environment in these areas.

Officials at the West Virginia Coal Association didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.

West Virginia American Water Lifts Ban Zone-by-Zone

West Virginia American Water began the long-awaited flushing process yesterday afternoon for residents who have been without water since Thursday.

Residents in the nine counties began the flushing process using an interactive online map. The chemical leak has left residents without the use of water since Thursday. Residents have been instructed to follow a detailed process once their area is in the blue zone on a map at amwater.com. Jeff McIntyre is President of West Virginia American Water. He said it’s a three-step process.

  1. Turn on all your hot water taps and flush for 15 minutes and shut those taps back off.
  2. Turn on your cold water taps and flush for five minutes and then turn those off.
  3. Go outside and then go to your outside taps, any fixtures you have outside and flush for five minutes.

The press conference was held Monday afternoon at the capitol where McIntyre and others outlined the next step. McIntyre said residents need to follow the precise instructions located on the website for additional outlets that the public may have such as appliances.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6w6HVVbTOI

“There’s the flushing and then it’s your appliances and fixtures, so if you have a dishwater and an icemaker there are additional steps that you may have in your house, but once you finish our protocol that’s laid out on several pages, once you’re done you’re done,” McIntyre said.

McIntyre did not offer a time table for how long it would take to get all zones through the flushing process. The first zone yesterday afternoon focused on the downtown Charleston area and included local hospitals in the region.

With the focus turning to how to prevent any future instances of chemical leaks into the water supply, Secretary of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Randy Huffman says they’re already working on legislation to help prevent accidents like this in future.

“We’re also at the governor’s request developing some proposals for how we might more properly regulate these facilities in order to minimize the risk of a spill,” Huffman said.

Huffman said they are looking into ways to more closely pay attention to sites that are storage-only such as the Freedom Industries site where the leak occurred. Sites such as Freedom’s are not regulated like facilities that house the production of the chemical at issue.

McIntyre said from the perspective of West Virginia American Water it’s not time to look at risk assessment until they have got the water once again available to all its customers.

“We’re not doing anything of that work at this time, there is no risk assessment going on at this time, our focus is singular to getting the customers back into water as early as possible,” McIntyre said.

Major General James Hoyer of the West Virginia National Guard said it may have taken a few days, but the group has been doing its best to deliver accurate information to people in the region.

“Every member of the inter-agency team that’s doing the testing and analysis and working this process has family members and loved ones that live in this area, so one of the over-arching things in addition to the science of what our folks are doing is the fact that we owe a responsibility to the citizens of the state and our families to provide the best information we have,” Hoyer said.

Members of the public seeking information on flushing process, should visit West Virginia American Waters site. 

End of Outage May Be in Sight for Water Customers, Businesses

John Kaiser of Dunbar has been without water since Thursday. No dishes, no laundry, no shower just like 300,000 other West Virginians.

But Sunday, you could say, was a better day for Kaiser. Sunday one of his three Kanawha County restaurants—a Steak Escape connected to a gas station on Corridor G—was allowed to reopen.

“You had to submit a plan to the health department of how you would meet their standards,” he said. “We did that and they came out (Saturday) night, did a walk through, did an inspection and they approved us.”

Kaiser said his restaurant brings in about three to four thousand dollars on the typical Saturday, but this week he lost that revenue. And he’s not alone.

Hundreds of businesses in nine counties have had to close up shop since a chemical leak contaminated the drinking water supply Thursday and spread through the entire West Virginia American Water System.

“The numbers overnight have trended the way we expected them to,” said Col. Greg Grant as he updated the media Sunday afternoon.

He heads a team of National Guard chemist who, with the help of 16 teams, have collected hundreds of samples throughout the distribution system.

Samples tested at 10 labs in West Virginia plus one in Ohio and another in Pittsburgh show less and less of the chemical is present in the water, getting customers one step closer to life as usual.

West Virginia American Water President Jeff McIntyre said the green light has not been given to begin flushing the system, but when it begins, crews will flush it out in zones.

Zones that include hospitals and the highest population densities are the top priorities to get back online, but McIntyre said it will still be a difficult process for customers to understand.

“They’re done by pressure zones so they will overlap zip codes, they will overlap county lines, they will overlap city lines because they’re based on our system pressure zones,” he explained.

So, McIntyre and his team have set up a website where customers can simply type in their address and a virtual map will show you if you’re in a zone that’s been given the all clear.

A hotline to check on your clearance will also be set up and automatic calls will be made by the company when your home is in the green, but the phone number and web address are not being released until the first zone is ready to begin flushing.

Governor Tomblin warned customers to heed the directions of water officials and not start their own part of the flushing process early.

“This is still a state of emergency. Please don’t jump ahead,” he said Sunday. “That green light has not been given yet.”

Department of Health and Human Resources Secretary Karen Bowling said detailed protocols on how to deal with cleaning will be dispersed when flushing starts as well. Those protocols will include dealing with pipes, hot water tanks, appliances, anything that has come in contact with the contaminated water.

Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman said there has been no reported impact to neither animal nor aquatic life since the leak. No fish kill has been reported, which he said was a concern.

Freedom Industries is reportedly working closely with DEP teams to clean up the site as quickly as possible.

DEP Emergency Response Director Mike Dorsey said they’ve dug trenches to collect chemical leaching in the groundwater and have set up booms on the riverbank to prevent any additional chemical from getting into the Elk River.

Tomblin added, however, he thinks the company should have offered more assistance in the water recovery effort.

“As we found out, most people did not know a whole lot about this particular chemical,” he said. “As you saw, we had to do a lot of research internally very quickly to find out what effects it may have.”

“I think perhaps they could have been a little more forthcoming and offer their assistance on what problems this particular chemical could have caused.”

Tomblin said regulations will be a top priority as the legislative session continues. He plans to work with DEP Secretary Huffman to figure out how to regulate such storage facilities.
 

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