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.
The West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training confirms that a miner died at Mettiki Coal’s Mountain View Mine in Tucker County.
In an email, the state office said 20-year-old Daniel Lambka of Kitzmiller, Maryland, “suffered crushing injuries”.
The statement said the accident happened around 9:10 p.m., Thursday night.
Mr. Lambka had 2 ½ years of mining experience 4 ½ months of which were acquired at this mine. His position was that of general laborer.
State officials are investigating. Inspectors from the West Virginia Office of Miner’s Health Safety and Training have been on-scene conducting their investigation since Thursday evening.
It’s now been a week since the chemical spill at Freedom Industries in Charleston leaked roughly 7,500 gallons of crude MCHM into the Elk River and tainted the water supply of some 300,000 residents of the Kanawha Valley and surrounding areas. Many residents remain suspicious of the water quality after the State Bureau for Public Health–in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–advised pregnant women Wednesday night not to drink water until the chemical is untraceable in West Virginia American Water’s system.
The CDC had been quiet about the impact on MCHM in West Virginia’s water supply until Wednesday’s warning to expecting mothers and hadn’t spoken to media since the spill. However, the agency finally broke its silence on the matter Thursday morning, speaking to Ken Ward and David Gutman of The Charleston Gazette, saying that it’s “almost as if we’re learning as we go” regarding the potential effects of the spilled chemical.
The CDC also fielded questions from local and national media on a conference call Thursday afternoon.
“This is a dynamic and evolving event,” Dr. Vikas Kapil, chief medical officer for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Environmental Health, said repeatedly on Thursday’s conference call.
Dr. Kapil said only a few animal studies on MCHM exist and CDC scientists are working to make summaries of those studies available to the media and the public. He also pointed out that studies are not available on the chemical as it relates to cancer or reproductive health in animals.
While hundreds of thousands of West Virginians are going on five days without water, a school in Wyoming County has not had usable water since September.
The flushing process is underway but without an upgraded system, Herndon Consolidated and those on the Alpoca Water Works lines will have to wait even longer for usable tap water.
“It’s awful because I mean the water is brown and no one wants to wash their hands in brown water,” fifth grader Martina Sizemore said.
Rather than the water system owner, a PSD is working to fix the problem. It’s complicated and involves two public service districts, a small company, and a NASCAR driver.
Alpoca Water Works is a small company that supplies the water to the school and other communities such as Alpoca, and Bud. In a message, owner Rhesa Shrewsbury admitted that the water is bad but said that it’s only been bad for a couple months. Shrewsbury says it’s because the company no longer employs, or “lost” the water operator.
William Baisden with the Logan County PSD says his district is working “in good faith” to fix the water the old and dated system. Logan has assisted Wyoming County with water problems since a devastating flood in 2001 nearly destroyed the region.
Credit Jessica Lilly
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Gallons of water are regularly stored in the kitchen area.
Logan PSD is acting on behalf of the Eastern Wyoming PSD.
Shrewsbury says her family is in the process of selling the company. But Baisden says it’s not a simple sell and the parties are trying to work out “ownership issues”. He says Alpoca Water Works leased the land from coal companies until the property was purchased by Nascar driver Greg Biffle.
Biffle didn’t immediately return our request for comment.
In the meantime, teachers have tried to create a non-disruptive learning environment by always having bottled water and hand sanitizer in the classroom.
Principal Virginia Lusk is hoping the issue is resolved soon.
“The staff here works so hard and everybody has just made it go as smooth as they can to make this work and to keep the kids safety and the sanitary conditions for the kids,” she said.
Okey Mills has taught at the school for more than 15 years.
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A water dispenser replaces the water fountain in the hall at Herndon Consolidated.
“I’m surprised that many of their parents and people in the community haven’t complained more,” he said.
The flushing process is underway but Logan PSD says it could still take weeks to completely flush the system. There are no hydrants in the district which can be used to drain systems.
So for now, and since September, each faucet is running and toilets are flushed often in an effort to reach usable water.
“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.
The West Virginia Poison Center says calls have not increased since the ban on water use in nine counties affected by Thursday’s chemical leak was lifted in some of those areas. The majority of residents and businesses affected by the chemical leak remain without clean tap water.
On Monday afternoon, West Virginia American Water began the process of lifting bans on water usage for thousands of West Virginians.
The ban was first issued last week when a chemical used in coal processing leaked from a Freedom Industries plant into the nearby Elk River.
Since then, the public has been instructed to call the poison control center with concerns.
Director Elizabeth Scharman says calls have been steady since the initial “do not use” order was first put into place.
As the ban is lifted in areas, Scharman says the center has received calls about an increased odor, but that was expected. She says residents should keep in mind that the flushing process will likely cause the smell to increase since the contaminated water has been sitting in the water lines for days.
The center is evaluating each call individually and suspects that some cases of skin irritation could be caused by constant hand sanitizer use. Scharman says excessive testing would be needed to confirm the source of the irritation.
