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West Virginia chemical spill leaves 300,000 without tap water

 west-virginia-chemical-spill-leaves-300-000-without-tap-water

CHARLESTON, W. Va.: Up to 300,000 West Virginia residents spent a second night unable to bathe, shower or drink tap water on Saturday after a chemical spill into the Elk River near the state capital of Charleston, although chemical levels were declining.

As much as 5,000 gallons (18,927 liters) of industrial chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or Crude MCHM, leaked into the river on Thursday, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin told CNN. He declared a state of emergency for nine counties on Friday, and President Barack Obama issued an emergency declaration. The spill forced schools and businesses to close in Charleston, West Virginia's largest city. Tomblin said that hourly tests on the affected water supply show "the chemical level is declining".

 "But we're just not sure exactly how long it's going to take before it's acceptable to lift the do-not-drink ban," he said. Jeff McIntyre, president of West Virginia American Water Co, which runs the state's largest water treatment plant, also said he could not say when the water would be safe to use. "We don't know that the water's not safe, but I can't say it is safe," he told a news conference. Water carrying this chemical has an odor like licorice or anise, McIntyre said, and though not highly lethal, the level that could be considered safe has yet to be quantified.

By Friday evening, 737 people had called the West Virginia Poison Center to report concerns or symptoms related to the spill, water company spokeswoman Elizabeth Scharman said. Symptoms included nausea, vomiting, dizziness, diarrhea, rashes and reddened skin "varying from very mild to much more bothersome", Scharman said.

The center knew of 70 people who had been seen by an emergency room doctor, though only a handful had been admitted to hospitals, she said.

The spill came from a tank belonging to Freedom Industries - a Charleston company that produces specialty chemicals for the mining, steel and cement industries - upriver from a plant run by West Virginia American Water.

West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection had received a report of a strange odor on Thursday morning and visited the site, where they found a leaking tank, a spokeswoman for Governor Tomblin said.

"The old tank has been emptied and taken away and as of right now the company is closed down," Tomblin said.

Tomblin said that when government officials arrived at the scene, "They had had to convince them they needed to get in to take care of this problem."

According to a letter from the Department of Environmental Protection to Freedom Industries, officials had "discovered that no spill containment measures had been initiated and that an

accumulating MCHM leak pool was seeping thru a dike wall adjacent to the Elk River and a downriver oil sheen was observed."

Freedom Industries President Gary Southern said the company was still determining how much had leaked and that the company has been working with local and federal authorities, and apologized at a media conference in Charleston. "Our friends and our neighbors, this incident is extremely unfortunate, unanticipated and we are very, very sorry for the disruption to everybody's daily life that this incident has caused," Southern said. Emergency workers and American Water distributed water to centers around the affected area. Residents formed long lines at stores and quickly depleted inventories of bottled water.

 "It's just ridiculous," said Jaime Cook of Charleston, who was buying one of the last jugs of water at a Walmart store. "There's nowhere to buy water and everywhere seems to be sold out. This isn't going to last two days." Tina May, a Charleston resident, even considered heading out of town for the weekend. "I'm not sure how long I can last without a shower. This is unbearable," she said. North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory on Friday waived size and weight restrictions for trucks to expedite delivery of water, equipment and supplies.  REUTERS

Chemical Spill Causes State of Emergency, Rush for Water

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/wva-gov-declares-emergency-chem-spill-21481911

A chemical spill left the water for 300,000 people in and around West Virginia's capital city stained blue-green and smelling like licorice, with officials saying Friday it was unclear when it might be safe again for even mundane activities like showers and laundry. Federal authorities began investigating how the foaming agent escaped a chemical plant and seeped into the Elk River. Just how much of the chemical leaked into the river was not yet known.

Officials are working with the company that makes the chemical to determine how much can be in the water without it posing harm to residents, said West Virginia American Water president Jeff McIntyre. "We don't know that the water's not safe. But I can't say that it is safe," McIntyre said Friday. For now, there is no way to treat the tainted water aside from flushing the system until it's in low enough concentrations to be safe, a process that could take days.

Officials and experts said the chemical, even in its most concentrated form, isn't deadly. However, people across nine counties were told not to so much as wash their clothes in water affected, as the compound can cause symptoms ranging from skin irritation and rashes to vomiting and diarrhea.

No more than six people have been brought into emergency rooms with symptoms that may stem from the chemical, and none were in serious or critical condition, said State Department of Health & Human Resources Secretary Karen L. Bowling.

The spill brought West Virginia's most populous city and nearby areas to a virtual standstill, closing schools and offices and even forcing the Legislature to cancel its business for the day. Officials focused on getting water to people who needed it, particularly the elderly and disabled.

"If you are low on bottled water, don't panic because help is on the way," Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said at a news conference Friday afternoon. The governor said there was no shortage of bottled water, and that officials were working to get water to those who need it. At least one charity was collecting donations of bottled water, baby wipes, plastic utensils and other items for people unable to use tap water.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency also planned to deliver more than a million liters of water from nearby Maryland. Several companies were sending bottled water and other supplies, including Pepsi and the Coca-Cola Co., Tomblin said.

However, it appeared that some level of panic already had set in to some degree. At the Kroger grocery store in the shadow of a DuPont plant along the Kanawha River, people scrambled in the aisles to find bottled water, only to learn the store had been out since early Friday.

Robert Stiver was unable to find water at that store after trying at least a dozen others in the area, worried about how he'd make sure his cats had drinkable water. The water at his home had a blue tint and smelled like licorice, he said.

"I'm lucky. I can get out and look for water. But what about the elderly? They can't get out. They need someone to help them," he said.

That's what 59-year-old Dan Scott was doing: Taking care of his 81-year-old mother, Bonnie Wireman, and others in the area.

"She takes everything to heart. She forgot a few times and stuck her hand in the kitchen sink. When she realized what she did, she took out alcohol and washed her hands. Scrubbed them. She was really scared," he said.

West Virginia chemical spill shines spotlight on loose regulation

west-virigina-chemical-contamination

Charleston, West Virginia (CNN) -- It sounds like a dangerous combination: massive tanks holding chemicals near a major water supply.

That was the setup in West Virginia last week when a chemical spill contaminated a river supplying water to hundreds of thousands of people. Officials say there wasn't much regulation at the site where the spill occurred and that little is known about the chemical that leaked.

Now, state officials say they're considering increasing oversight.

"Absolutely," Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin told CNN. "We need to do what we can to see that this kind of incident never happens again. There's no excuse for it."

Two U.S. congressmen say the spill exposes regulatory gaps in the country's chemical control laws.

And many in the area are asking key questions: What caused thousands of gallons of a chemical used to clean coal to spill into the water? How dangerous is the chemical? And why didn't anyone catch the problem sooner?

See West Virginia American Water Co. status map

State regulators inspected site in 1991, 2010, 2012

The facility where the leak occurred is owned by Freedom Industries, which supplies products for the coal-mining industry. The chemical that spilled, known as MCHM, is used to treat coal to reduce the amount of ash.

A state environmental inspector visited the site in 2010 after a complaint about an odor, said Randy Huffman, the head of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

"We went out on site and didn't find anything that would cause concern, no leaks or anything like that," Huffman said. The licorice smell given off by the chemical that spilled, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, can emerge when it is transferred to or from the facility -- not just during a leak.

Inspectors visited the plant again in 2012 to determine whether any processes had changed that would require the company to obtain additional air quality permits, Huffman said. The inspectors decided no new permits were needed, and they wouldn't have inspected the tanks where Thursday's leak occurred, he said.

Before that, the last inspection at the site had been in 1991. That inspection took place because the Charleston plant stored different materials that required regulation, said Tom Aluise, spokesman for the environmental protection department.

State environmental officials said the facility had the only permit it was required to have: an industrial storm water permit.

"Basically they had to monitor the runoff from the rain and send us the results every quarter. Those were the only regulatory requirements," Huffman said. "The materials they were storing there is not a hazardous material."

That's because the facility didn't process the chemicals, he said. It just stored them. The company was responsible for maintaining the tanks, Huffman said.

"There's not necessarily the kind of robust environmental controls that people might anticipate that there should be on these types of facilities," he said. That's left West Virginia officials trying "to beef up what could be viewed as a loophole with these kinds of facilities."

Booth Goodwin, the U.S. attorney in Charleston, said he's investigating whether any laws were broken when the chemical leaked into the Elk River. But even if no regulations were violated, rules in the state could change as a result of the spill.

"We are writing to request that you immediately schedule a hearing to examine the regulatory gaps that this incident has exposed in the nation's toxic chemical control laws," Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-California, and Rep. Paul D. Tonko, D-New York said in a letter Monday.

Little known about chemical

Government health and safety officials say they don't know much about MCHM. But they told about 300,000 people in nine counties to stop using the water once they discovered that 7,500 gallons of the chemical had leaked on Thursday. On Monday, they said people in some areas could start using the water again and assured them that it would be safe.

This much is clear: somehow the chemical leaked out of the storage tank, breached a concrete wall surrounding the tank, seeped into the soil and reached the water supply.

"My guy said you could see it bubbling up out of the ground, and there was no question what was going on," Huffman said.

Freedom Industries President Gary Southern said last week that residents' safety had been his company's first priority since he learned about the leak.

"We have been working with local and federal regulatory, safety and environmental entities ... and are following all necessary steps to fix the issue," he said. "Our team has been working around the clock since the discovery to contain the leak to prevent further contamination."

An emergency official told CNN that when he saw the tank, it looked old.

"I would say the tank was antique," said C.W. Sigman, deputy director of emergency services in Kanawha County.

Elizabeth Scharman, West Virginia's poison control director, told CNN last week that the chemical inside the tanks had not been studied.

"We don't know the safety info, how quickly it goes into air, its boiling point," she said.

That raises an important question, Waxman and Tonko said Monday.

"It is critically important that we understand how the law allowed a potentially harmful chemical to remain virtually untested for nearly forty years. ... We should not have to wait for a major contamination event to learn the most basic information about a toxic chemical in commerce," they said.

A 2005 fact sheet about the chemical filed with West Virginia environmental officials offered guidance for what to do if a large spill is detected: "Prevent runoff from entering drains, sewers, or streams."

west-virginia-town-charleston-without-water-for-5-days-after-chemical-spill

Hundreds of thousands of people in West Virginia are waking up to a fifth day without clean water after a toxic chemical used to clean coal spilled into a town's water supply. Some 300,000 residents of Charleston had their tap water poisoned last Thursday when company Freedom Industries' alleged shoddy safety practices led to a chemical spill. Officials expect that it will be at least another few days before the water is deemed safe to drink again as it emerged that Freedom Industries has worked largely without regulation or environmental inspection for more than two decades.

One homeowner showed just how toxic and flammable the water is this weekend by setting on fire a glass poured from his kitchen tap. Over the weekend, water tests reportedly showed that levels of the licorice-smelling chemical  4-methylcyclohexane methanol were consistently below a toxic threshold, and in some samples, there was no trace of the substance at all.

As the tests were expected to continue today, there were questions about how and why the leak occurred and whether the company, Freedom Industries, took too long to let state officials know about the problem. An interagency group working to restore water service and to provide water to customers planned to meet on Monday morning, said Amy Shuler Goodwin, spokeswoman for the governor. The group includes the water company, National Guard and state officials.

If tests continue to show the water is safe, the ban across a nine-county region will be lifted in waves for specific areas, the first of which would be in downtown Charleston, said West Virginia American Water President Jeff McIntyre. He gave no timetable for when people could start using the water again. 'I can tell you at this point, I don't believe we're several days from starting to lift (the ban), but I'm not saying today,' McIntyre said at a news conference on Sunday. 'We see light at the end of the tunnel,' Governor Earl Ray Tomblin told reporters. 

( Facts: A Charleston couple conducted a water experiment where they were able to set it on fire following its contamination with 4-methylcyclohexane methanol - which is used to clean coal. More than 300,000 people have been told to indefinitely avoid drinking or even touching tap water following Thursday's chemical spill in Charleston, West Virgina. Erin Brockovich, who helped the illness-plagued town of Hinkley, California win $300,000,000 after a chemical company poisoned their drinking water announced she will lend her expertise in West Virginia.  While considered 'not lethal' 4-methylcyclohexane methanol is harmful if swallowed and can cause nausea, irritation, and headaches  )

The governor urged residents not to use the water for anything but flushing toilets. Some people have put plastic bags around faucets so that they will be reminded not to use the water while others have left town to take a shower and find an open restaurant. Water distribution centers have handed out bottled water and trucks with large tanks of water have filled up containers for people to take home. So far, only ten people exposed to the contaminated water were admitted to the hospital, and none were in serious condition, Health and Human Resources Secretary Karen Bowling said.The chemical, even in its most concentrated form, isn't deadly. However, people were told they shouldn't even wash their clothes in affected water, as the compound can cause symptoms ranging from skin irritation and rashes to vomiting and diarrhea.

Other than schools, day-care centers, hotels and many restaurants that will be closed Monday, the region was open for business, but foot traffic was slow.  Stores and offices adjusted by providing bottled water and hand sanitizer. The governor said state government offices would be open on Monday. Lawmakers were to return to the Capitol on Monday after Friday's session was cut short because there wasn't any water. Their work now will likely include a look at how Freedom Industries flew under the regulatory radar. Freedom Industries' tanks don't fall under an inspection program and the chemicals stored at the facility weren't considered hazardous enough to require environmental permitting.  
Essentially, Freedom Industries wasn't under state oversight at all, said Michael Dorsey, chief of the state Department of Environmental Protection's Homeland Security and Emergency Response office. Environmental inspectors had not visited the Freedom Industries site since 1991.  Matthew Blackwood, chairman of a local emergency-response group, told the Wall Street Journal: 'We definitely had not thought of water contamination on this scale. I don't want to overregulate private industry, but this does show that there are some chemicals that fall under the radar.'

The contamination disaster began with a smell last Thursday when residents of Charleston began to complain of a licorice-like aroma in the air, one that seemed most potent near the town's water treatment plant. For an unknown period, a chemical called 4-methylcyclohexane methanol used in the Mountain State's prevalent coal industry had been gushing into the Elk River, a waterway from which West Virginia's largest water treatment plant sources its water. About 7,500 gallons of the chemical are believed to have leaked into the water supply from a one-inch hole in a storage tank.  Lawyer Erin Brockovich, famous for her class-action suits which target the corrupt practices of big business, announced on her website last week that she and her team are headed to Charleston, to investigate the cause and possible implications of the chemical spill at Freedom Industries. 'When things like this happen, we respond accordingly,' Ms Brockovich told The West Virginia Record.  'People have contacted us who are concerned, and it’s certainly a scenario that concerns us. I mean, there are 300,000 people without water right now.'

Federal and state officials are scrambling to uncover who is to blame for the disaster, a complex hierarchy of ownership of the plant in question starts at small town Freedom itself and slithers upward to the likes of Koch Industries. After fixing the immediate problem of finding drinking water, Brockovich said it must be determine what lasting affects West Virginia's leak will have on its children, ecosystem and wildlife. It's the same process she took beginning in 1993 when she began her quest in Hinkley, California where Pacific Gas and Electric helped sicken an entire town following a serious and subsequently concealed release of dangerous Chromium 6 into the town well water. The detrimental health effects of chromium 6 are well studied, however the compound the poured into the West Virginia river last week is not nearly as well understood, especially at the extreme levels released during the leak.

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