"I'm From West Virginia and I've Got Something to Say About the Chemical Spill"

[freshwest]

35. The solution is in the last paragraphs:

There are sensible, sane ways to do things. (A mile and a half upstream from a water intake facility, for fuck's sake. Upstream.) It's essential for state and federal governments to consult with scientists -- actual, real scientists, in spite of this area's long and fierce tradition of anti-intellectualism when it comes to public policy -- and provide a regulatory apparatus for maintaining safety standards and making sure things are up to code, and that there's a protocol in place for when systems fail. That's what a society does to protect the people who live in it. Or the people who live in it will -- should, anyway -- naturally come to the conclusion that their health and safety mean zero in the calculus of industry and politics.
Over the past couple of decades, the resource manufacturing industries have been leaving the state in a slow trickle -- of their own volition, though, and not, as might have been hoped, at the end of a pike -- and gradually, the state is going to have to move to a post-coal, post-chemical economy. That's a good development, to my mind. But the history of sellout politicians and cheapjack business interests in this region keeps me on watch for the next plague of locusts.
Having been made to endure fucked up Air, Earth, and Water, we ought to be mindful of that history, and make sure that history goes with us, always, into the voting booth, into the streets, into the home, into the wider world.
Otherwise, to steal a line from the old hymn -- and don't we love our Jesus, our stories of noble suffering around here -- we'll all of us, residents and politicians and operators alike, find ourselves standing in the Fire Next Time.