The 6 Most Terrifying Facts About the Chemical Spill Contaminating West Virginia’s Drinking Water [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/water/6-most-terrifying-facts-about-chemical-spill-contaminating-west-virginias-drinking-water



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1. No one knows when water will be safe to drink again. “I can’t ballpark it because I don’t know,” Jeff McIntyre, president of West Virginia American Water Co. said at the conference. The entire water system will have to be flushed and tested, and though the Elk River was the water source immediately impacted by the spill, McIntyre said that the spill impacts the entire distribution of the water system — sending water to a total of 1,500 miles in the area.

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2. No one knows when the leak started or how much has leaked into the Elk River. It was complaints of an odor coming from communities near the river that triggered city and county officials to investigate. They found the source of the spill at 4 p.m. Thursday, but had no way of knowing how long the chemical had been leaking. McIntyre also said he didn’t think the chemical was still leaking, but didn’t know the current status of the spill for sure. According to a Department of Environmental Protection spokesman, the state is “confident that no more than 5,000 gallons escaped,” but only knows that “a certain amount of that got into the river. Some of that was contained.”

3. The water company has had no contact with Freedom Industries, the company that manufactures the spilled chemical. According to McIntyre, the company provided no notice of the spill and hasn’t been in communication with the water company since.

4. There is no standard process for testing the toxicity of the spilled chemical in water. When the water company found out about the spill, it was originally told it was a different chemical than the 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol that had spilled into the water. But even when the company found out what the chemical was, it couldn’t answer many questions about it. “This not a chemical that’s typical to be in water treatment process,” McIntyre said during the press conference.