West Virginia Water Crisis Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

The Fall Of AppHarvest, Inside Appalachia

When the farming start-up, AppHarvest, launched in Kentucky, it promised good jobs in coal country — but some workers called it a grueling hell on earth. We also explore an island of Japanese culture in West Virginia called Yama.

When the farming start-up, AppHarvest, launched in Kentucky, it promised good jobs in coal country — but some workers called it a grueling hell on earth.

We also explore an island of Japanese culture in West Virginia called Yama.

And fish fries have been a staple in Charleston, West Virginia’s Black community for years. We visit one and learn a little about what’s made them so popular.

You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.

In This Episode:

The Rise And Fall Of AppHarvest
Japanese Homestyle Haven In Morgantown
Fish Fries, An African-American Tradition In Charleston, WV
Remembering the WV Water Crisis 10 Years Later

The Rise And Fall Of AppHarvest

When AppHarvest built its first greenhouse in 2020, it was touted as no less than the future of farming — and even Appalachia itself. The start-up would use cutting-edge technology and local workers to produce vegetables on an industrial scale. But then, last year, the company filed for bankruptcy.

Austyn Gaffney recently reported on the downfall of AppHarvest, in a story for Grist. Mason Adams talks with Gaffney to learn more.

Japanese Homestyle Haven In Morgantown

Staff member Ryoko Kijimoto serves up rich rice bowls and ramen in Yama’s diner atmosphere.

*Credit: Min Kim*

High Street in Morgantown, West Virginia is a bustling strip. Tucked away off the main drag is a place called Yama, a cozy diner that’s been serving up homestyle Japanese food since the 1990s. Japanese students and staff share their language, culture and food. It’s also a place of comfort and connection for everyone.

Folkways Reporter Lauren Griffin has the story.

Fish Fries, An African-American Tradition In Charleston, W.Va.

Andre Nazario

*Credit: Leeshia Lee/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Signs for fish fries are pretty common in Charleston, West Virginia, especially in the city’s Black community, where they’ve become a tradition.

Folkways Fellow, Leeshia Lee, grew up in Charleston and says friends and neighbors frequently hosted fish fries, often as a way to raise money for community needs. Lee has the story.

Remembering The W.Va. Water Crisis 10 Years Later

Kallie Cart reporting on the January 2014 West Virginia water crisis.

*Credit: Kallie Cart/WCHS-TV*

Ten years ago, a chemical spill in Charleston, West Virginia’s Elk River contaminated the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of people. The disaster became a national story, about corporate distrust and community action.

WVPB’s Randy Yohe spoke with Kallie Cart, a former broadcast reporter who covered the crisis and went viral after one particular exchange.

——

Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Chris Knight, Tim Bing, Amythyst Kiah, Jeff Ellis and Bob Thompson.

Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.

You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.

You can find us on Instagram, Threads and Twitter @InAppalachia. Or here on Facebook.

Sign-up for the Inside Appalachia Newsletter!

Inside Appalachia is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

Key Health Players Look Back At The 2014 Water Crisis

Ten years ago, a state of emergency and water advisory was issued for nine West Virginia counties following a chemical spill in the Elk River.

On Jan. 9, 2014, a state of emergency and water advisory was issued for nine West Virginia counties following a chemical spill of Methylcyclohexane Methanol (MCHM) from Freedom Industries, Inc. into the Elk River. MCHM is used in the coal preparation process.

State environmental officials estimated that 7,500 gallons of crude MCHM leaked into the Elk River.

West Virginia American Water told more than 100,000 customers (about 300,000 people) in Boone, Cabell, Clay, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Logan, Putnam and Roane counties not to ingest, cook, bathe or wash with the water from their tap, even after boiling. Water in this coverage area was OK’d only for flushing and fire protection.

On Jan. 13, 2014, DHHR Secretary Karen Bowling announced at a press conference that 14 people were admitted to the hospital, 231 people were treated and released in connection to the water contamination. West Virginia Poison Control received more than 1,000 calls. No deaths were connected to the spill.

Then-director of West Virginia Poison Control Elizabeth Scharman said calls were steady from when the initial “do not use” order was first put into place.

As the ban was lifted in areas, Scharman said the center received calls about an increased odor, but that was expected.

The center evaluated each call individually and suspected that some cases of skin irritation could be caused by constant hand sanitizer use. Scharman said excessive testing would be needed to confirm the source of the irritation.

On Jan. 15, 2014, the Health Department consulted with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It recommended pregnant women continue drinking bottled water until there were no longer detectable levels of the chemical in the water distribution system.

The CDC reaffirmed previous advice that it did not anticipate any adverse health effects from levels less than 1 ppm.

A week after the spill, the CDC fielded questions from local and national media on a conference call.

“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 the conference call.

Kapil said only a few animal studies on MCHM exist and CDC scientists were working to make summaries of those studies available to the media and the public. He also pointed out that studies were not available on the chemical as it relates to cancer or reproductive health in animals.

Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute, described the chemical leaked from Freedom Industries into the Elk River, crude MCHM, as a kind of detergent used to clean coal, known as a surfactant.

“You’re trying to separate the coal from the non-burnable stuff like shales, clays, stuff like that,” Ziemkiewicz said. “The process takes advantage of the fact that coal is lighter than these clays and rocks, but they have to be separated. So you use these surfactants to help that separation process.”

He said that water ends up in slurry impoundments, and then often is recycled to wash more coal.

“MCHM, which is of course, methylcyclohexane methanol,” Ziemkiewicz said. “It’s a relatively volatile compound, and when I say that, that means it tends to first of all, float on top of the water, and since it floats on top of the water, and it’s volatile, so it’s lighter than water, less dense than water, it floats on top just like an oil would. And it tends to be volatile, which means that if you give it a chance, the MCHM disperses as a gas into the atmosphere.”

One of Ziemkiewicz’s crews was on-site at Freedom Industries to study the spill in 2014.

“We mobilized the crew, one of our crews here at the water research institute, to go downstream from the spill point and measure how much MCHM was found in the Elk and in the Kanawha rivers,” Ziemkiewicz said. “And what we found there was pretty much dispersed fairly quickly and was non-detectable by the time it got to the Ohio River.”

Ziemkiewicz said one of the things that went wrong during the spill was that the water intake at the water treatment plant remained on, pulling the chemical compound along with water into the water distribution system for nine counties.

“The MCHM was essentially trapped in these distribution pipes, and it took a long time to flush that MCHM back out of the system,” Ziemkiewicz said.

Mike McCawley, a clinical associate professor in WVU’s Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences, said a group of his students volunteered to work in the Charleston area during the spill.

“They were going around helping to inform people, and also taking information about what people were doing to kind of protect themselves,” McCawley said. “So it was a time when we got to talk a lot more about chemical exposures, environmental chemical exposures that people had not thought about before.”

McCawley called it a time of stress and worry for the state.

“It was a difficult time, because both drinking and bathing are something that people were worried about doing because they didn’t know what the long-term health effects were,” McCawley said.

The 2014 water crisis spurred the creation of WVU’s School of Public Health which was previously the Department of Community Medicine.

“One of the recommendations that Dr. (Rahul) Gupta, in fact made, was that there should be a School of Public Health at West Virginia University, which was the impetus for turning our Department of Community Medicine into a school, a whole school of public health,” McCawley said.

While the water crisis left thousands without water for weeks, McCawley said he has not heard of any long-term health effects from the spill.

At the time of the spill, the short-term health complaint McCawley heard most often was headaches.

“Headaches were a big thing that people were complaining of,” McCawley said. “That was probably, I think, top of the list.”

While some policies and practices have changed since the 2014 spill, McCawley believes there is still plenty of room for improvement.

“There needs to be regular good inspections, and reporting that is done from that,” McCawley said. “We found that the leaks that were occurring, didn’t seem to get taken seriously, as soon as they possibly could have.”

McCawley also emphasized the need for “inflammation” as a symptom to be taken more seriously and to report exposure to any chemical to a doctor.

“We know inflammation can lead to a lot of things,” McCawley said. “We don’t know how much inflammation leads to what necessarily, but we know it leads to all sorts of nasty things. And so we should keep it in mind and maybe make sure our doctors know that.”

By Jan. 17, 2014, the last of the “do not use” water restrictions were lifted for the last customer area in West Virginia American Water’s Kanawha Valley district.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

W.Va. Lawmakers Hear Disaster Response Tips

One of the first presentations West Virginia lawmakers heard after gaveling in for the 2018 state Legislative session was one to help them more effectively guide their districts in the face of emergencies.

Since 2009, there have been 21 state emergency proclamations, 10 Federal Emergency Management Agency major disaster declarations, and 4 FEMA emergency declarations – that’s according to Jimmy Gianato, Director of the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

Both Gianato and Major General James Hoyer of the West Virginia National Guard spoke with lawmakers about the best steps to take to ensure proper aid is sent efficiently when disasters occur.

Hoyer told lawmakers it’s important to first communicate with their local Emergency Operations Center.

“If you can continue to encourage people at your level in your districts, to flow their requests up through the local EOC,” Hoyer said, “it significantly helps us in managing that overarching piece by flowing things to the right focus points for us to get to.”

Those focus points could include coordinating additional aid or supplies, volunteer groups, or reaching out to FEMA if a situation is bad enough.

“The quicker we can document damage and push it up to FEMA, the sooner we can get a declaration, which means, the flow of federal money comes faster.”

Hoyer and Gianato said, however, districts should be prepared enough to go up to 72 hours before additional aid is sent.

Citizen Groups Unite to Demand Water Justice

Representatives from 37 citizen groups fighting for “water justice” met Tuesday at the Capitol to release a letter of solidarity with Flint, Michigan.

The letter, dated February 9^th, parallels the 2014 West Virginia Water Crisis with the water crisis currently unfolding in Flint.

“Two years ago, we stood in those same lines, visited local emergency rooms, and demonstrated in the halls of power because our water, too had been poisoned,” it says. Crystal Good, a West Virginian who had been affected by the 2014 West Virginia Water Crisis read the letter at Tuesday’s press conference.

The letter and subsequent speeches from group leaders also called for government accountability and the protection of safe drinking water in West Virginia.

“Working together across race and class in the aftermath of this disaster, we are making real change. We don’t have all the answers, but we are gaining ground for safe, reliable water here in West Virginia, as you are in Flint, Michigan,” concluded the letter.

Other speakers called for The Public Service Commission to continue their investigation of what went wrong in West Virginia in 2014 and for congressional members to pass, instead of block, proposed federal water protections.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.

What Does the World's Best Water Smell Like? (Hint: It's Not Black Licorice)

When I signed up to be a judge at the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting, I thought it would just be a bit of fun — a relaxing weekend in an historic West Virginia mountain spa town.

Then came the water crisis: a massive spill of the coal-cleaning chemical MCHM into our water supply, and more than a week under a “do not use” order.

My seven-year-old son, Max, came down with the stomach flu right in the middle of all this. We couldn’t use tap water, not to wash our hands or even our clothes. I’ll spare you the details, but it was rough.

So you can understand how the spill changed my outlook toward a water-tasting competition. On the day of the competition, I arrived completely unsure how to judge the quality of water. I learned to trust my sense of smell — in more ways than one.

This is an event some Berkeley Springs leaders dreamed up 24 years ago to showcase their historic springs (home of “George Washington’s Bathtub.”)

Contestants from five continents entered, as far away as Tanzania, Bosnia, New Zealand, and South Korea. A panel of mostly novices like me were to judge dozens samples of tap water and bottled water (both sparkling and non-carbonated.)

We were trained by watermaster Arthur von Wiesenberger, whose name so perfectly matches his job that I am skeptical whether it is real.

“People will say that water is just like air: it has no taste or smell,” von Wiesenberger told us.

“Well, ask the people in Beijing if the air has no smell — or the people in Charleston about the water,” he said, and looked sheepishly at me.

Water being distributed in Kanawha County, W.Va.

Ah, the smell. That black licorice smell. After the spill, it wasn’t just emanating from the water. It permeated the air of the entire Kanawha Valley. One night, the anise odor so strong, we could smell it inside our house. It was astringent. It hurt to breathe it too deeply.

After state officials finally stopped the MCHM from entering the water supply, after they told us to flush our pipes, you could still smell it in the water for weeks. I would engage in a nervous ritual: run the tap, lean in a little and sniff three times — and there it would be.

"Well, ask the people in Beijing if the air has no smell — or the people in Charleston about the water," he said, and looked sheepishly at me.

So at the water tasting, when von Wiesenberger told us to sniff the water three times to judge its odor, I knew exactly what to do. I had trained.

Good water, von Wiesenberger told us, should have no odor. It may have a taste, based on its mix of beneficial minerals. But it should not smell.

Soon, I was judging the first category in the event: municipal tap water. I soon realized my sense of smell was one of the best indicators of whether I’d like the taste. If the sample smelled of chlorine or other chemicals, I was sure to hate it.

My son Max has a strongly-developed sense of smell…and he’s a pretty good hiker, too. Both important skills for a West Virginian.

I’ve never spent much time thinking about smells, but my son does. Max has autism, and he has trouble understanding the world through speech.

Max has this habit of bringing all food and liquids to his nose and smelling it — sniff, sniff, sniff — before deciding whether he’ll eat or drink it. My wife and I joke that he acts as if we’re trying to poison him.

After the water crisis, I get it. Smell is what you depend upon when you don’t trust anything else. It is the most primal sense.

The other day at a grocery store in Charleston, I saw they were selling a t-shirt about the water crisis. It featured a man wearing a gas mask and the phrase, “Trust no one.”

That’s the lasting damage of the spill in my community. We were failed by so many institutions: government, private industry, the water company.

I’m the leader of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, and I feel some responsibility to help turn that distrust and anger into something positive. How can we facilitate a discussion about moving West Virginia forward, and how can we, as a state, rebuild that trust?

Meanwhile, back at the water tasting, they announced the winners. I learned that Clearbrook, British Columbia has the best tasting tap water in the world, and Santa Ana, California is tops in the U.S.

And then I looked at the list of winners throughout the competition’s 24-year history. And there it was: Charleston, West Virginia, in the top five for best tasting tap water, in three separate years.

My beautiful home, Charleston, West Virginia

Having the best water in the world is a proxy for many other things — clean air, clean living, and a well-functioning, competent government. Maybe by following our sense of smell, by making our water tops in the world again, my hometown can convince the world and ourselves that we’re a wonderful little city in the mountains once again.

A Rural Community's Water System: An Emergent Emergency

Water donations from across the country are finding their way to West Virginia … still. But the Charleston area is not the only place where residents don’t feel safe to use the tap water. Residents in a community in Wyoming County have been purchasing drinking water since September.

Herndon Consolidated and residents in the surrounding communities have been buying their water for about five months. The community has been on a boil water advisory while ‘ownership issues’ are resolved and the aging water system is worked on.

Herndon Consolidated Principal Virginia Lusk showed public service officials the current condition of the water in the school last week.

Although the water is passing bacteria tests, the boil water advisory remains in effect. Students at Herndon Consolidated continue to use plastic silverware, and Alpoca and Bud residents purchase bottled drinking water and are limited to washing clothes on the days when the water is clear enough not to ruin their clothes.

“This phone rings all the time people wanting to collect water and donate water from different states far away,” Lusk said.

Lusk says since our first story aired a few weeks ago, groups across the country have reached out to help carry the financial burden that residents have carried for months.

Although most residents take pride in their ability to adapt to the situation, some are growing weary and worry about the possible health effects of bathing in brown water.

The ‘bad water’ has even caught the attention of Governor Earl Ray Tomblin. Wyoming County Emergency Service Director Dean Meadows says the National Guard visited the school last week to assess the situation. Meadows says the residents are not experiencing an emergency situation.

“We don’t want to sound unsympathetic to the people of Bud,” Meadows said. “We’re very sympathetic and we want them to know that we are doing all we can and I’m very appreciative of the attention that they are getting but to put them in an emergency situation where the state starts putting in water, who is going to bear that expense and where does it end when other communities are involved.”

In the meantime, Virginia Lusk says the school will continue to accept donations for the community until the boil water advisory is lifted. The community is encouraged to pick up water from the school.