Shelley Moore Capito Says She "Stands With West Virginia Against Obama’s War On Coal"-- As Her Constituents Line Up For Bottled Water

Most West Virginians never seem to learn any lessons about the natural resource exploitation companies that hold absolute power in their state. Their bottom lines-- the only priority they care about-- trump the well-being of the rest of society. That simple. It's why healthy societies protect themselves from predators with regulations and effective government. Now people in Charleston and 9 surrounding counties are praying the trucks of bottled water arrive and keep arriving, courtesy of the National Guard-- 9 counties where they can't use their regular water sources for drinking, cooking or showering. No coffee brewing either, although toilet flushing is still OK. That's about 300,000 people whose well-being was trampled because an outfit called "Freedom Industries," which processes and stores chemicals for the coal industry, accidentally allowed 5,000 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM), an industrial chemical used in coal processing, to seep from a ruptured storage tank into the Elk River, just upstream of the intake pipes for the regional water company, about two-and-a-half miles from the junction of the Kanawha River in downtown Charleston.

Since Thursday, schools, restaurants, hotels and other businesses have been closed down in an area already struggling with an economy that is far from recovered. Yesterday, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin told CNN that "we're just not sure exactly how long it's going to take before it's acceptable to lift the do-not-drink ban." Formal charges have already begun in civil suits claiming that West Virginia American Water "failed to maintain an appropriate emergency response plan," and that Freedom "failed to properly maintain and store its chemicals." Freedom Industries' president poo-pooed the health threat, saying it has "very, very low toxicity" and insisting it poses no danger to the public. West Virginia American Water and government officials have a very different different take, which is why water use in the 9 counties is banned as unfit for human consumption.

Much of the anger centers around the coal-industry company from which the chemical leak occurred. And there's also frustration among some-- including Danny Jones, the mayor of West Virginia's most populated city and capital, Charleston-- that the water company trying to deal with the resulting mess still doesn't have a timeline for when things will return to normal.

"It's caused us more problems than you could ever imagine," Jones said Friday night, pointing out people can't do things like wash their hands after going to bathroom or wash their clothes.

"... It's a prison from which we would like to be released."

The area in question-- Boone, Cabell, Clay, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Logan, Putnam and Roane counties-- voted overwhelmingly against Obama in his reelection bid, although was very supportive of conservative Democrats Senator Joe Manchin, Governor Tomblin and Rep. Nick Rahall. Most of the effected area is in WV-02, Shelley Moore Capito's district and she won every effected county in a landslide, despite her career-long opposition to effective regulations for the coal industry. Her only comment about the crisis as of yesterday was posted on her website: "Shelley Moore Capito stands with West Virginia against Obama’s war on coal. Stand with Shelley." She's running for the open U.S.Senate seat."

Instead of trying to drum up political support with her War on Coal nonsense, Capito ought to consider what this mess she helped create is going to mean to her state going forward.

MCHM is basically a poison and until the entire water system is flushed out, the water is unusable for anything except flushing toilets. That means no bathing, no cooking, no cleaning, no laundry, no nothing. In addition to the effect on daily domestic life, consider the impact on hospitals, hotels, and every other business that depends on copious amounts of water (restaurants, laundromats, caterers, barber shops, beauty salons, the list is endless…) and you’ve got a major economic disaster on your hands.

Speaking of hands, the advent of flu season adds another wrinkle. Frequent hand-washing is one of the top strategies for preventing spread of the virus. The Centers for Disease Control reports that flu cases are on the uptick and are widespread in many states. As of last week West Virginia was one of the few states not yet reporting widespread flu, but that could change with the spill’s impact on access to safe water for frequent washing.

Let’s note again that Crude MCHM is a fairly common industrial chemical in general use by the mining sector, not just coal.

However, the coal connection knocks yet another pin out from under the “clean coal” image that the industry has been trying so hard to prop up.

When you only apply “clean” to carbon emissions at the burn point, you could make the case that next-generation coal-burning technology makes coal a cleaner fuel.

However, that leaves not just one but a whole group of 800-pound gorillas in the room: the practice of blowing up entire mountains and filling in streams known as mountaintop coal mining, destructive subsidence from underground mines, mine fires, contaminated mine drainage, air pollution impacts from rail transportation, and the widespread practice of storing fly ash from coal power plants in open lagoons (they break, for one thing).

The practice of using toxic chemicals to prep mined coal hadn’t crossed our radar before the West Virginia disaster, but it looks like we’ll have to add that to the list, too.