As more than 300,000 West Virginians still live without piped water after last week's massive chemical spill dumped toxic 4-methylcyclohexane methanol into the Elk River, activists and regulators are concerned that despite continuous environmental disasters hitting the U.S. in recent years, a lack of legal fixes means more people will suffer similar outrages in the future.
“The situation and leak shows that much more oversight and regulation needs to take place and without constant observance, this can happen again,” West Virginia Rivers Coalition Executive Director Angela Rosser told Occupy.com. Rosser believes this disaster must serve as an educational moment for government and private industry to look deep at states' regulatory agencies and their efficiency in ensuring the safety of the population.
The most recent spill, which was noticed by observers last Thursday and has left hundreds of thousands in the Charleston region without water to drink, wash or touch for nearly a week, forced the closure of schools and businesses due to the existential threat posed by the chemicals.
Gary Southern, president of the now widely condemned company, Freedom Industries, which caused the spill, claimed in a statement last week that residents' safety were his company's top priority since he learned about the leak. The company's chemical, pipes and other facilities had not been inspected since 1991.
"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.
Indeed, Lt. Col. Greg Grant of the West Virginia National Guard said two tests Sunday morning at the treatment facility showed the chemical’s concentration at 0 parts-per-million for water going into and out of the plant. That meant good news for Charleston-based residents.
But it doesn’t hit on the bigger, more pressing problems facing chemical plants and other environmentally volatile businesses across the state, region and country as a whole. Namely, that without stricter regulations and checks on corporate laissez-faire business practices, accidents like this will only continue.
“We must begin to examine the system and give some real thought to making reform and valuing our natural resources over industry interests,” continued Rosser, who warned against seeing the Freedom Industries spill as an isolated incident and urged much stronger oversight of the oil and chemicals industry overall.
The explosion at the West Chemical and Fertilizer Plant that killed 15 people in West, Tex., in April could have been prevented with better oversight and regulation. The plant hadn't been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985.
And in July, the oil-carrying freight train that derailed and exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people and destroying the town, was found to have been mislabeled, stating that it carried a less dangerous type of crude than the explosive material it had on board.
Industrial accidents, in fact, are a matter of course in a way most Americans probably aren't aware. Literally thousands of oil and chemical spills occur each year in the U.S., according to the Department of Commerce.
While most do not affect human populations, the increase in large-scale disasters last year – and West Virginia's gigantic toxic spill last week – may finally be bringing the issue to the forefront of public debate.
Sarah Gomez, a Virginia-based environmental activist and consultant to local government agencies, believes the future of U.S. chemical safety depends on people demanding that the agencies responsible for ensuring their safety do their work properly – which means flawlessly.
“I think this recent spill, and others in the past few years, shows that the government and governmental agencies tasked with creating a safe living situation for thousands need to do a better job at ensuring the plants and facilities are safe from error,” she told Occupy.com via telephone on Monday.
“What we are seeing is families, schools and other vital societal structures coming to a stop because of a lack of oversight. This happens almost everywhere a major spill occurs. We cannot blame the companies entirely because there [is] supposed to be safety oversight involved – and it is just not happening,” she added.
For many people, the West Virginia spill has revealed in concrete terms how the fundamental lack of oversight, over several decades, left the plant ready and waiting for such a disaster to occur.
The local Charleston Gazette-Mail reported over the weekend that experts from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board had asked the West Virginia state government three years ago to implement a new program which aimed to prevent accidents and chemical releases in the Kanawha Valley.
The request came after the investigation of an August 2008 explosion and fire that killed two workers at the Bayer CropScience plant in Institute, WV. No program was produced. Now, another team from the same board was expected to arrive in Charleston this week to investigate the spill of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol into the region's water supply.
Throughout the Bush years, federal oversight money was cut leaving many states to “go it alone,” giving companies the right to largely do as they pleased; because of corporations' political clout and economic power, it often meant doing little to no self-regulation.
But today, as more Americans more aware of the real and actual threats to their health posed by corporations that place financial profit over the well-being of the communities in which they operate, that may start to change. Starting in West Virginia.
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