{"id":7368,"date":"2014-01-11T04:40:49","date_gmt":"2014-01-11T09:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=7368"},"modified":"2014-01-11T04:43:15","modified_gmt":"2014-01-11T09:43:15","slug":"fossil-fuels-are-a-disaster-literally-in-wv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/fossil-fuels-are-a-disaster-literally-in-wv.html","title":{"rendered":"Fossil fuels are a disaster: literally in WV"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n300,000 people have their drinking water poisoned by\r\na coal chemical in a disaster declared by a state and the federal government.\r\nDo we know what’s in that coal ash\r\n\r\ncoal ash<\/a>\r\nin the Lowndes County landfill?\r\nDo we trust a pipeline company\r\nwith\r\n\r\na long list of safety violations<\/a>\r\nto dig into our aquifer?\r\n

\r\nDavid Jackson wrote for USA Today yesterday,\r\n\r\nObama sends disaster aid to West Virginia<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nPresident Obama is sending federal assistance to West Virginia,\r\nwhere schools and businesses are closed after a chemical spill\r\nThursday into a Charleston river.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of\r\nWest Virginia and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local\r\nresponse efforts,” said an administration statement on Friday\r\nmorning.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nUnder the order, the Department of Homeland Security and Federal\r\nEmergency Management Agency will coordinate efforts with local\r\nofficials.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nKiley Kroh\r\nwrote for Thinkprogress yesterday,\r\n\r\nWest Virginia Declares State Of Emergency After Coal Chemical Contaminates Drinking Water<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nResidents of nine counties in West Virginia have been told not to\r\nuse or drink their water after a chemical used by the coal industry\r\nspilled into the Elk River on Thursday. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin\r\ndeclared a state of emergency as more than 100,000 customers, or\r\n300,000 people, are without safe drinking water.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“Don’t make baby formula,” said West Virginia American\r\nWater Company president Jeff McIntyre. “Don’t brush your\r\nteeth. Don’t shower. Toilet flushing only.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nNed Resnikoff wrote for MSNBC yesterday,\r\n\r\nWest Virginia chemical spill leaves 300,000 without clean water<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe leak started in Charleston, West Virginia’s capital, the county\r\nseat for Kanawha County, and the state’s largest city. Local\r\nofficials became aware that something was wrong around 10 am\r\nThursday morning, after residents called to complain of a black\r\nlicorice smell in the water, according to Kanawha County director of\r\nhomeland security and emergency management Dale Petry. After\r\nconsultation with the local health department and state authorities,\r\nthe West Virginia American Water Company warning went out a little\r\nbefore 6 p.m.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“This has been devastating to the public at large and the\r\npeople who live in our city,” said Mayor Danny Jones of\r\nCharleston, W.Va. in a Friday morning press conference.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nShades of the\r\n\r\nWaycross Seven Out Superfund site<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe spill originated at a chemical storage facility run by the\r\nCharleston-based company\r\n\r\nFreedom Industries<\/a>, when a 48,000 gallon\r\ntank dumped an indeterminate amount of the compound\r\n4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol into the Elk River. The chemical, also\r\nknown as MCHM, is used by coal companies to wash and prepare their\r\nproduct. People who are exposed to a sufficient quantity of MCHM may\r\nexperience vomiting, skin blistering and shortness of breath. Very\r\nlittle is known about the other potential health consequences of\r\nexposure to the compound.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nKen Ward Jr. wrote for wvgazette.com yesterday,\r\n\r\nFreedom Industries cited for Elk chemical spill<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nVirginia inspectors arrived at Freedom Industries late Thursday\r\nmorning, they discovered that the company had taken “no spill\r\ncontainment measures” to combat the chemical spill that has put\r\ndrinking water supplies off-limits for hundreds of thousands of\r\nresidents.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe state Department of Environmental Protection said Freedom\r\nIndustries violated the West Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Act\r\nand the Water Pollution Control Act by allowing the chemical “Crude\r\nMCHM,” consisting mostly of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, to escape\r\nfrom its facility, just upstream from West Virginia American Water’s\r\nregional intake in the Elk River.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWhat do we know about\r\n\r\nwhat burned at Perma-Fix in Valdosta in August<\/a>\r\nor what is leaking from that chemical treatment plant into our aquifer\r\nor downhill into the Withlacoochee River?\r\n

\r\nGreg Botelho and Tom Watkins wrote for CNN today,\r\n\r\nChemical levels in West Virginia water drop, but still no end in sight to ban<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nFreedom Industries is feeling the heat from others as well.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nPresident Gary Southern tried several times to walk away from a\r\npress conference Friday evening, saying “it has been an extremely\r\nlong day,” only to be called back by insistent reporters —\r\nincluding one who noted how long a day it has been for all the West\r\nVirginians now without drinkable water or a full explanation as to\r\nwhy.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“This incident is extremely unfortunate and unanticipated,” Southern\r\nsaid. “… This has been a very, very taxing process.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nPoor baby: feeling taxed because his company poisoned drinking water\r\nfor 300,000 people.\r\n

\r\nShauna Johnson wrote for MetroNews yesterday,\r\n\r\nCompany president tells different leak story than DEP<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nSouthern said the problem tank had been emptied by Friday evening\r\nand its contents were moved off site. The next step in remediation,\r\nhe said, would be to remove dirt that may be contaminated from the\r\nproperty.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nThat “next step”\r\n\r\nstill isn’t done in Waycross many years later<\/a>.\r\nOnce contamination gets into the ground, it’s very hard to get it back out.\r\n

\r\nThe CNN story concluded:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“I do not know how long this will last,” the governor said.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nCassady Sharp\r\nwrote for Greenpeace yesterday,\r\n\r\nHours before chemical spill, West Virginia Governor promises to keep coal industry “alive and well”<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nThe disaster of continued spills and\r\ncontamination will last until we got off of fossil fuels.\r\n

\r\nHow about we stop poisoning people with coal and fracked “natural” gas\r\n(no, nukes are not the answer), and get on with solar and wind power?\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"300,000 people have their drinking water poisoned by a coal chemical in a disaster declared by a state and the federal government. Do we know what’s in that coal ash coal ash in the Lowndes County landfill? Do we trust a pipeline company with a long list of safety violations to dig into our aquifer? […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[216,14,16,70,2,20,32,55],"tags":[7380,8753,2406,8704,8706,8728,7381,8701,8699,8702,8710,12,7,6816,8715,6917,6,8727,2597,7379],"class_list":["post-7368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-economy","category-environment","category-ethics","category-government","category-law","category-pollution","category-water","tag-4-methylcyclohexane-methanol","tag-coal","tag-coal-ash","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-ethics","tag-freedom-industries","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-perma-fix","tag-pollution","tag-seven-out","tag-valdosta","tag-water","tag-waycross","tag-west-virginia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1UQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7368"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7371,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7368\/revisions\/7371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}