An area of the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia known as the Birthplace of Rivers is getting some special attention this week.
The name Birthplace of Rivers refers to a wilderness area in the eastern part of the state that contains the headwaters for the Cranberry, Cherry, Gauley, Elk, Williams and Greenbrier rivers.
The West Virginia Rivers Coalition has called on Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to introduce legislation to designate Birthplace of Rivers National Monument. The president also has the authority to do so under the Antiquities Act. The National Monument designation would grant special protection while still allowing public access to the land.
“There’s about 84 percent of voters in West Virginia that support the idea of Birthplace of Rivers becoming a national monument,” said Linda Balfour, with Keen Footwear.
The apparel company has chosen the Mon National Forest as one of five places in the country to focus on protecting during a national tour. Keen is sponsoring an event at 1 p.m. Friday at Hill and Holler Bicycle Works in Lewisburg to collect signatures for a petition in support of the Birthplace of Rivers effort.
This article was edited on 09/20/2015 to reflect the fact that the West Virginia Rivers Coalition asked Sen. Joe Manchin to designate the Birthplace of Rivers as a national monument, not President Obama, as was previously reported.
A bill to roll back regulations of storage tanks is making its way through the legislature. This week the House Judiciary Committee passed a version of Senate Bill 423 by a narrow vote of 13 to 12 without making any significant changes to the proposed legislation.
In the wake of last year’s Freedom Industries spill that contaminated drinking water for 300,000 people in and around the state’s capital city, the Above Ground Storage Tank Act was passed into law. A year later, a set of bills emerged in the House and Senate that aimed to reduce the number of regulated tanks regulated in that act from about 48,000 to about 100, according to policy analysts.
The Department of Environmental Protection reports that they played no part in initiating this new legislative action. Legislators say the 2014 act went too far by requiring duplicitous regulations for industry. Their answer to industrial push-back is now an amended version of Senate Bill 423 which also reduces the scope and stringency of last year’s act.
Credit Downstream Strategies
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Graphic Detailing the Elk River zone of critical concern, from downstream strategies new report.
1. Regulations don’t matter if there’s weak enforcement.
Paul Ziemkiewicz is the director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute. He remembers presenting information to the Legislature after last year’s chemical spill.
“My point was that we had rules on the books,” Ziekiewicz recalled. “One was federal legislation 40 CFR 112 which is the Oil Spill Control and Countermeasures Act. That requires that all tanks that are 1,320 gallons have secondary containment, regular inspections. It’s a nation-wide rule.”
Ziemkiewicz also points out additional state rules enacted in the mid-1990s that require almost the same measures as the federal rule. He said the MCHM spill in January of 2014 was really the result of inadequate enforcement.
What came to light during the course of the Freedom Industries investigation was that regardless of the rules on the books, the Freedom tanks, perched on the Elk River a mile and a half upstream from a major public water intake did not have a groundwater protection plan as required by state law.
There was a compliance report filed in 2009 by the DEP’s Department of Air Quality that mapped and detailed the site and contents therein. But agency officials say it wasn’t the responsibility of the DEP to inspect storage tanks or secondary containment measures.
That lack of oversight is something last year’s act set out to address.
Credit Bill Hughes
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2. Protecting groundwater isn’t the objective.
Julie Archer from West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organization says last year’s bill extended extra protections to not only public water systems, but to groundwater in general.
“It has the potential to improve the inspection and the maintenance of tanks that could affect rural landowners who rely on private water wells for drinking and other uses,” Archer said.
But improving groundwater protection was never the objective, according to lawmakers. Legislators and Secretary Randy Huffman at the DEP indicate that SB 423 is more closely aligned with the original version of legislation Governor Tomblin introduced in 2014—legislation designed to protect public water systems specifically.
Credit Jessica Lilly / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Flooding in Wyoming County
3. Five-Hour Zones of Critical Concern. During Fall or Spring?
Huffman says this year’s proposed legislation does allow for adequate regulatory controls for tanks deemed a high risk to public drinking water supplies. SB 423 tries to focus DEP regulatory efforts on tanks in zones where, if there were a spill, contamination could reach public water intake within five hours.
“The zone of critical concern is determined using mathematical model that accounts for stream flows, gradient and topography. The length of the zone of critical concern is based on a five-hour time-of-travel of water in the streams to the intake.”
While lawmakers have been told that about 12,000 tanks currently would fall into these “zones of critical concern,” the five-hour flow detail befuddles the director of the WV Water Research Institute, Paul Ziemkiewicz.
“If a stream is moving at say four miles an hour, then that zone is 20 miles long. On the other hand if it’s moving at one mile an hour, it’s five miles long. So that means you have a different zone of critical concern during winter, with spring run-off, than late summer. If you use the maximum value, there aren’t many places in the state that would not be in a zone of critical concern.”
4. Are we creating loopholes?
Executive director of the WV Rivers Coalition, Angie Rosser, is worried about the bill’s potential to create loopholes for industry. Tank owners of the 12,000 tanks in zones of critical concern, she says, can opt-out of the regulation by naming other regulatory programs that exist.
“We are looking to make sure that if that alternative compliance is pursued that it is at least as stringent as what is in the [Above Ground Storage Act].”
Rosser hopes that when the bill is heard in the House chamber this week, amendments will be adopted that specify more clearly the extent of and frequency of tank inspection as well as language to guarantee public water utilities are fully informed of water contamination threats.
A new report says drinking water sources in West Virginia are at risk of contamination from thousands of aboveground storage tanks.
The report says the greatest risk is posed by 3,167 tanks near and upstream from surface drinking water intakes. A 2014 state law requires extra safeguards for tanks in these areas.
The report says more than 21,000 other tanks outside these areas also could contaminate water intakes. These include 19,133 tanks 1 to 5 miles from groundwater intakes and 2,143 tanks 1 to 5 miles from surface water intakes.
Environmental consulting firm Downstream Strategies and the nonprofit West Virginia Rivers Coalition released the report Thursday. The findings are based on their analysis of more than 47,000 tanks registered with the state by mid-December.
Leaders of citizen groups, a water scientist and an impacted mother held a phone-based news conference this week to look back on the crisis and outline the progress, pitfalls and next steps in their work to ensure safe drinking water for all West Virginians.
Dr. Ben Stout, aquatic biologist with a specialty in water quality and a professor at Wheeling Jesuit University.
Rebecca Roth, a Charleston-area mother who was pregnant during the water crisis.
RECAP:
Executive Director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Janet Keating started the call off with a recap of events that lead to state legislation, SB 373, and Freedom Industry’s bankruptcy and subsequent indictments.
Executive Director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, Angie Rosser reflected that there was plenty of blame to go around when it came to a chemical spill that could taint drinking water of 300,000 people.
“I don’t think it’s any one person,” Rosser said, “it’s the whole system and the politics in West Virginia that have for decades set us up, in my opinion, for this kind of catastrophe.”
TODAY:
According to a survey conducted over the summer by the social justice organization WV FREE, 80 percent of voters said they are concerned about toxins in public water sources. Many West Virginians are now heavily embracing a cultural standard of living off of plastic-bottled water. (Bottled water which, in addition to not being free, doesn’t happen to be regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act.)
The lack of public confidence is understandable, according to aquatic biologist Dr. Ben Stout from Wheeling Jesuit University. Stout pointed out some of the concerns he was left with after the spill, including how alarming it was that, “if it hadn’t been for the smell, for our human ability to detect small quantities of 4-MCHM, we would have never known that this whole community was exposed to a potentially toxic material.”
It’s a troubling realization, Rosser–from the Rivers Coalition–said, especially in light of the findings of recently implemented above-ground storage tank inspections.
Rosser: “The first round of inspections were completed by January 1, just a few days ago. And what was revealed this week to the public is that of those inspections that have been submitted,1,100 of those did not pass inspection. They’re deemed ‘not fit for service.’ That shows us that there are still tanks out there that may be leaking today.”
The discussion also encompassed some happy lessons learned in light of the spill.
Ben Stout talked about the abundant scientific resources in the region who sprang to respond;
Rosser said she saw progress from state officials who, for the first time, started to consult with citizen action groups in the wake of the crisis.
TOMORROW:
Rosser posed the question: “Will the public remain active?”
Looking forward, groups discussed anticipated legislative hurdles like funding Source Water Protection Plans and safeguarding other protective water laws and regulations.
“The legislation and the progress that we saw over the last year could not have happened without citizen involvement,” she said.
Environmentalists, activists and artists of all sorts are commemorating the one year anniversary of a chemical spill into the Elk River near Charleston. The spill of MCHM by Freedom Industries tainted the water supply of 300,000 West Virginians across nine counties and left them without usable tap water for days.
Here’s a list of some of the events happening around Charleston and elsewhere to mark one year since the spill:
Kick off events for ‘January: A Month of Water’
Organized by WV Safe Water Roundtable, a group made up of other groups such as the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and Advocates for a Safe Water System, event’s kick off Friday and will last throughout the month.
3– 5 p.m.: Citizen Education Workshops at the WV Culture Center
Two 2-hour free workshops sponsored by the West Virginia Rivers Coalition that will inform everyone about clean water issues and give them the tools and support to get involved.
5 – 6:15 p.m. Dignitary Remarks and Networking Reception at the WV Culture Center
Invited dignitaries include Sen. Joe Manchin III, Sen.-elect Shelley Moore Capito, Rep. David McKinley, Rep.-elect Alex Mooney, Rep.-elect Evan Jenkins, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, DEP Sec. Randy Huffman, Incoming Bureau for Public Health Commissioner Dr. Rahul Gupta, Sen. Bill Cole, Del. Tim Armstead, Charleston-area outgoing and incoming legislative members. Refreshments will be served.
6:30–7:15pm Honoring the Waters Interfaith Vigil
One-Year Anniversary Candlelight Vigil at the Kanawha River in front of the WV State Capitol.
7:30–8pm Reception
In the WV Culture Center, vigil participants and filmgoers gather.
A shot of the Sutton Dam from Mike Yougren’s “Elk River Blues.”
A world premiere of the documentary film by Mike Youngren features West Virginians’ response to systemic failures that continue to threaten our water. Film sponsored by the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charleston in the WV Culture Center Theater.
Vandalia Collective Puppet Protest
Credit VanCollective
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On January 9th at 1:30 p.m. the Vandalia Collective will be in downtown Charleston at the Kanawha County Library, and immediately following in front of the Capitol Building, raising awareness about last year’s chemical spill. They will also promote remembrance events hosted later that day.
[glug]: An Original Play from The Lunar Stratagem Theatre Company
Credit Provided
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Actors Nicole Peronne and Nathan Mohebbi in the original work [glug].
The Lunar Strategem is an award-winning theater group based in Huntington. They premiere their newest work, [glug], Jan 8-10 at The Joan C. Edwards Performing Arts Center on the campus of Marshall University. Performances are each night at 7:30 in the Francis-Booth Experimental Theater. Tickets are $12 at the door and free to Marshall Students.
Grown-up siblings Herbert and Myrtle (Nathan Mohebbi and Nicole Perrone) have lost their trail of breadcrumbs and will go to any lengths to bring water to their town. They even raid their own dreams for some trace of their father, a noted scientist who disappeared under mysterious circumstances when he revealed that the town’s reservoir had been poisoned. Water is as elusive as memory in [glug], a witty, hallucinatory fairy tale for adults.
