The Division of Air Quality approved the permit for Optima Belle to replace the equipment damaged in the explosion and return to normal operations.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) has approved an air quality permit for a Kanawha County facility where a fatal explosion occurred in 2020.
The Division of Air Quality approved the permit for Optima Belle to replace the equipment damaged in the explosion and return to normal operations.
The WVDEP held a public meeting on Optima Belle’s permit application earlier this month.
It found that the company used an incorrect process for drying a chemical compound that when overheated, could cause a reaction that exceeded the design pressure of the dryer unit.
Three others were injured in the blast, including two workers and the driver of a car that was struck by debris. A shelter-in-place order was issued within a two-mile radius of the plant.
The lead federal investigator examining the explosion that killed two men at a West Virginia industrial plant May 24 says they’re still testing and gathering evidence to determine the what caused the approximately 100-gallon tank to blow apart.
Mark Wingard with the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board says Friday that one possible scenario is some type for chemical reaction that violently caused an increase in pressure or heat or both.
Midland Resource Recovery outside Philippi was decommissioning the tank that contained residual mercaptan, the chemical that gives a strong odor to natural gas, when it exploded into multiple pieces.
The federal office of Occupational Safety and Health Administration said owner Jan Strmen and employee Justin Marsh were killed decommissioning the tank. Another worker was seriously injured.
An independent national agency is joining investigations into this week’s explosion at a West Virginia industrial plant that left the owner and an employee dead.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board examines the root causes of chemical incidents.
Board spokeswoman Hillary Cohen said Friday that a team is heading to the Midland Resource Recovery facility outside Philippi. According to information from the federal Office of Safety and Health Administration, the plant cleans and decommissions old odorant tanks from gas companies.
OSHA said owner Jan Strmen and employee Justin Marsh were decommissioning a tank when it exploded. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection says they were using bleach while preparing a tank for cleaning.
Another employee was hospitalized with serious injuries.
The Chemical Safety Board voted Wednesday evening to approve the final report and recommendations that were the result of a more than two and a half year investigation into a Charleston chemical leak.
The leak, which was discovered January 9, 2014, spurred a tap water ban for more than 300, 000 West Virginians for as many as ten days.
It originated in a 46,000 gallon tank on the banks of the Elk River. Owned by Freedom Industries, a since bankrupted and dissolved company, the tank contained a coal cleaning chemical called MCHM. That chemical traveled downstream about a mile and a half to West Virginia American Water’s water treatment plant intake.
The Report’s Findings
Credit @chemsafetyboard / Twitter
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Twitter
The two holes discovered at the base of a 46,000 gallon storage tank that leaked MCHM into Charleston’s drinking water supply.
Chemical Safety Board Chair Vanessa Allen Sutherland and lead investigator Johnnie Banks shared the report during a press conference Wednesday, stressing two major findings.
The first of those, Banks said, was that the investigation found no evidence that the tanks located on the Freedom Industries site had been inspected in the ten years prior to the incident.
During Wednesday evening’s meeting, another investigator told CSB members the lack of evidence stretched back even further and that the tanks likely hadn’t been inspected in 30-40 years.
Sutherland added the second major findings was that the utility had no idea the chemical was located near its intake and had no plans in place to deal with a potential contamination.
“What happened here in Charleston was preventable,” Sutherland said, and requiring the inspection of storage tanks and proper response plans could have prevented the incident from ever occurring, or at least mitigated public harm, she added.
CSB Recommendations
The final report includes recommendations for both the utility and the manufacturer of the chemical. They include:
Communicate findings and lessons learned with all American Water subsidiaries
Conduct an inventory of hazardous chemicals near water treatment plants
Create response plans should a contamination of one of those chemicals occur
Update the MCHM safety data sheet with more complete information on its health impacts
The CSB, however, does not have the authority to force either Eastman Chemical, the manufacturer, or American Water Works, the parent company of West Virginia American Water to implement any of its recommendations. That would take legislative action.
Credit Dave Mistich / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The tanks at the Freedom Industries’ site were demolished in 2014 following several state and federal investigations.
CSB investigators also shared a list of lessons that can be learned from the 2014 incident, including the importance of a mandatory aboveground storage tank inspection program and the creation of source water protection plans– both of which were a part of a comprehensive storage tank bill approved shortly after the Charleston spill.
Although lawmakers have since revisited that legislation and rolled back some of its provisions, a CSB investigator said Wednesday evening he still believed the bill would be effective.
The Unanswered Questions
Members of the public were invited to speak directly to the Chemical Safety Baord Wednesday evening before the final vote on the recommendations and many expressed concerns over the answer they did not receive from the investigation.
“How long was it leaking? How long were we drinking it in our drinking water, not knowing it?” Gary Zuckett, head of the West Virginia Citizens Action Group asked, but investigator Johnnie Banks told reporters earlier in the day they could not conclude when they leak actually began.
Kanawha Valley resident Phil Price, who told board members he has a Ph.D. in chemistry and has worked on chemical spill investigations in the past, pointed out that the report also does not include conclusive evidence about how much MCHM leaked into the water supply. Instead, they rely on Freedom Industries’ estimates.
Although the report was approved Wednesday evening, Sutherland said the investigators will be asked to look into some of the publics concerns and include them in an addendum to the final report.
Investigators from the U. S. Chemical Safety Board presented preliminary findings Wednesday from their investigation into the January chemical leak at Freedom Industries in Charleston.
Lead Investigator Johnnie Banks explained the process they’ve gone through collecting evidence and information and said they will soon begin to analyze that data to put together a final report and recommendations.
During the presentation, however, Banks detailed some of his team’s initial findings.
Inspections have confirmed the source of the leak was tank 396, as previously thought. The tank had two holes in the bottom, both of which were smaller than an inch in diameter.
The team found a hole in a second tank on site which had also been storing the chemical crude MCHM. Banks said the tanks had a “growing corrosion problem,” which was apparent from the holes and also pitting in the metal.
The corrosion is thought to be caused by holes in the tops of the tanks that were letting water in. The water would then pool in the bottom, Banks said, causing the holes to form from the inside out.
Investigators could find no records of site inspections, making it unclear how often or how rigorous previous examinations of the tanks may have been.
Because of the amount of corrosion in the tanks, investigators believe the tanks may have started leaking before the reported January 9 spill.
Snaks said his team will analyze soil on site to try to determine when the leak began, but said that narrowing down a date was only a possibility. No date has been set for the final report’s release.
The federal Chemical Safety Board is coming to Charleston next week to release findings about a New Cumberland metal recycling plant explosion that killed three workers in December 2010.
The board said Thursday that it also will update the public on its investigation of a January chemical spill at the July 16 meeting. The Freedom Industries tank leak contaminated drinking in the Kanawha Valley for days.
In March, metal recycler AL Solutions in New Cumberland settled to pay a $100,000 civil penalty to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a $97,000 penalty to the U.S. Department of Labor.
The settlement requires AL Solutions to process or dispose of almost two and a half million pounds of titanium and zirconium stored at two facilities. It also must implement safety procedures for the New Cumberland plant.
