Tag: West Virginia
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One Month After West Virginia Chemical Spill Major Data Gaps and Uncertainties Remain
By Richard Denison Yesterday marked exactly a month since what is now said to be 10,000 gallons of “crude MCHM”—mixed with what was later found to have included other chemicals—spilled into West Virginia’s Elk River, contaminated 1,700 miles of piping in the water distribution system for nine counties, and disrupted the lives of hundreds of…
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Court Ruling Expands Secrecy on Public Safety Information Concerning Dam Failures and Chemical Spills
A sweeping new appellate court decision justifies federal agencies withholding substantial public safety information concerning dam failures, chemical spills and other critical events, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The ruling blocked PEER’s attempts to force release of the emergency plans in the event of failure of two large international storage dams on…
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12 Days After West Virginia Chemical Spill, Company Admits to Second Chemical
By Tina Casey Yep, you read that right. Almost two weeks after a storage tank was discovered to be leaking 7,500 gallons of the coal-washing chemical Crude MCHM into the Elk River/water supply for nine counties in West Virginia, company officials finally disclosed yesterday that 300 gallons of another chemical, “PPH, stripped,” was also part…
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Dangers of Water Privatization Emerge In the Wake of West Virginia’s Chemical Spill
By Matt Wasson It took a few days after a state of emergency was declared across nine West Virginia counties and one-sixth of the state’s population was told not to drink or bathe using their tap water for the national news media to discover a story of national importance occurring in the political backwaters of Appalachia. [caption id=”attachment_318240″ align=”alignnone”…
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300,000 West Virginians Told Not to Drink Water After Coal Chemical Spill, 600+ Sick
Do you take sugar in your morning coffee? How about 4-methylcyclohexane methanol? A large spill of a chemicals used to remove impurities from coal occurred Thursday in Charleston, WV, contaminating the Elk River less than a mile upstream of the intake for the state’s largest drinking water treatment plant. As many as 300,000 West Virginia…