The W Virginia chemical spill

"Those condition exist all over the country and the world. There are too many people and not enough land or resources to locate all these poison factory safely. Rolling heads treats a symptom, not the problem"

---Mike Ruppert

Chemical Leak Into West Virginia River Far Larger Than Previously Estimated

Think Progress,

12 January, 2014

As over 300,000 people in West Virginia face a fourth day without water, state environmental officials are now estimating that as much as 7,500 gallons of a chemical used to process coal — Crude MGHM — may have spilled into the Elk River. That number is a substantial increase from early estimates of 2,000 to 5,000 gallons.

The chemical leak, first reported Thursday, was at a facility owned by Freedom Industries along the Elk River, just 1.5 miles upstream from a major intake used by the largest water utility in the state, West Virginia American Water.

At a press conference Saturday afternoon, Jeff McIntyre, president of West Virginia American Water Company, said that it would likely still be “several days” before tap water in the nine counties affected would be safe for anything besides flushing toilets.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention has set the standard of 1 part per million as a safe concentration of Crude MGHM in drinking water. Levels of the chemical must remain below this threshold for over 24 hours of testing before the water company can begin flushing the system.

At a press briefing Saturday evening, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s (D) office released the first results of the now round-the-clock water sampling efforts. While some tests are coming in below the safe threshold, the system is still far from clean. Eight out of 18 recent test results tested above 1 part per million. Some of the earliest tests showed concentrations as high as 3 parts per million.

“The reason the numbers are going down is we believe less of the material is getting into the water,” said Mike Dorsey, the chief of homeland security and emergency response at theState Department of Environmental Protection. “We have cut of the source of the leak, the tank. There is still material under the concrete and the soil. We’ve taken aggressive measures on the shore line below the site.”

A team from the Chemical Safety Board will arrive in West Virginia on Monday to begin the long process of assessing the cause of the spill. The CSB is an independent federal agency with the authority to investigate industrial chemical accidents. The agency issues recommendations for prevention of future accidents.

To date, FEMA has brought in 1.4 million liters of water for residents. An additional 1.6 million liters are expected to come in over the course of the weekend.

The New York Times reported Saturday that at least 122 people have gone to local hospitals complaining of nausea, vomiting, and skin and eye irritation.

WV: Freedom Industries Has 

Ties to Koch Brothers

Daily Kos,

11 January, 2014

Very briefly ...

If news reports have left you with the impression that Freedom Industries - the company that has contaminated the water supply serving 300,000 people (and who knows how much wildlife) in nine West Virginia counties - is a rinky-dink Charleston operation, that might be because the media isn't mentioning its influential ties.

In 2008, Freedom Industries was specially selected by Georgia-Pacific Chemicals as a distributor of G-P's Talon brand mining reagents for West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Minnesota, Kentucky and Michigan.  

Georgia-Pacific Chemicals is, of course, a subsidiary of Georgia-Pacific, which was acquired by Koch Industries in 2005.  

"We are excited to offer our customers inventive products like Talon that push past the status quo in coal recovery to bring profit and productivity benefits to mining preparation plants," said Joshua Herzing, director of business development for Freedom Industries. "Georgia Pacific's longstanding technical expertise and R&D capabilities combined with the industry knowledge, skill and reputation of Freedom Industries will provide an excellent platform for growth and development of new technology to meet existing and future customer demands. We are proud to be part of Georgia-Pacific's strategy as a global supplier of mining reagents in multiple market segments."

There's lots more to the story, People.