Event to commemorate 10th anniversary of WV water crisis

“I was looking back at photos and all of the packed rooms of churches and elementary schools that people were in, many of us who hadn’t showered in days,� West Virginia Rivers Coalition Executive Director Angie Rosser said. “It was a moment, for sure.�

It was a harrowing moment for the Kanawha Valley.

A crisis in our midst

Following the Elk River spill, emergency rooms swelled with patients reporting nausea, rashes and diarrhea. More than 30 million bottles and one-gallon jugs of water were distributed to the public.

Nearly 11,000 gallons of a mixture containing the coal-processing chemical 4-methylcychohexanemethanol (MCHM) and polyglycol ethers leaked from a Freedom Industries aboveground storage tank. The mixture flowed downstream to the intake of a West Virginia American Water treatment facility 1.5 miles down the Elk River.

Now, Rosser and other water safety proponents are trying to create a moment to spark action toward cleaner, healthier West Virginia water by looking back.

The West Virginia Rivers Coalition and partners are hosting an event in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä next week they say will feature interactive art, music and storytelling to stress the need for a water-secure future.

“It is part a reflection on the past and also what’s happened since then, but also what are the water threats, the water crises that West Virginia is still dealing with today, and what needs to be done about it,� Rosser said.

Personal reflections display Morgan King, West Virginia regional organizer for the Climate Reality Project, an emissions reduction-focused group founded by former vice president Al Gore, has been collecting reflections from those affected by the 2014 chemical leak via an online form at tinyurl.com/2014WaterCrisis. King said responses will be accepted on a rolling basis through at least Jan. 9.

Quotes and photographs submitted online will be displayed during Tuesday’s event. King said attendees will still be able to submit their stories onsite at the display. Stories and photos also will be shared on a website with the consent of participants, King added.

ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä-based artist Nichole Westfall will create a mural at Tuesday’s event that attendees can help paint to feature West Virginia motifs and children playing in a creek, according to West Virginia Rivers Coalition communications manager Maggie Stange. Stange said the mural will travel around the state for the next year.

West Virginia musician Sienna Ferrell will headline the event, with Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, chairman of the West Virginia Democratic Party and a musician, to be among other performers, Stange said.

Rosser said the event will feature speakers looking back at the 2014 water crisis and aiming to impart the importance of water security to rally support for stronger protections in West Virginia.

Water security risks loom

The event will focus on community organizing and legislative reforms that occurred in response to the leak — and subsequent rollbacks of those reforms, Rosser indicated.

“[W]e’re still here, trying to make it not all a downer but to sort of highlight the positives that came out of it,� Rosser said. “It certainly brought a large community of people together and raised awareness about the vulnerability of our water supply.�

Two months after the leak, the West Virginia Legislature passed Senate Bill 373, which instituted a regulatory program for aboveground storage tanks that included registration, certified inspection and spill-prevention response plans.

But state lawmakers have weakened aboveground storage tank protections since then, requiring inspection of fewer tanks in legislation passed since 2014.

In its final report on the leak, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board found no documentation of prior inspections conducted by Freedom Industries or the previous facility owner, Etowah River Terminal, which would have identified internal corrosion in the aboveground storage tank that leaked.

Freedom Industries had been required to maintain sufficient secondary containment under the state water pollution control permit’s stormwater pollution prevention plan and groundwater protection rule, the report observed. But the board, known as the CSB, found no evidence that Freedom or Etowah River Terminal implemented a stormwater pollution prevention or groundwater protection plan and noted that the state Department of Environmental Protection didn’t inspect the site for compliance with those programs because of resource constraints.

West Virginia’s percentage of public water systems with health-based violations of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act in 2022 was 22.7%, far exceeding the 4.5% national average, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data.

The EPA defines general health-based violations as violations of maximum contaminant levels or maximum residual disinfectant levels allowed in drinking water or of rules that specify required processes intended to reduce contaminant amounts in drinking water.

In addition to the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and the Climate Reality Project, the Rivers Coalition said other event sponsors include:

• Morgan County-based water protection nonprofit Cacapon Institute.
• Environmental and miner protection activist group Appalachian Voices.
• West Virginia Environmental Council.
• West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.
• West Virginia Land Trust.
• Morgantown-based environmental consulting firm Downstream Strategies.
• Choose Clean Water Coalition, a Chesapeake Bay watershed-based water protection group.

Advocates say they hope that, by coming together Tuesday, they’ll show that hopes to reduce environmental health risk in West Virginia aren’t dead in the water.

“[W]ater connects us,� Rosser said.