West Virginia legislature is now working on a new addition to the Clean Water Act (CWA) for the state in order to ensure safer water for the residents in and around the area, especially the Kanawha River. The federal CWA is an adaptive management policy that allows the individual states to manage the water quality in their states, while monitoring regularly as well as making changes when necessary. The new act that is in the process of being passed is called the Chemical Safety and Water Protection Act of 2014, or the “Spill Bill,” which will bring more regulations to manage above ground chemical storage tanks. The bill would require more frequent reports from the industries with the holding tanks as well as allowing the state to collects fees and fines from those industries for any cleanup that is necessary.
The most recent spill earlier in 2014 is what sparked this slow process of passing new legislation in West Virginia. The spill that occurred was from a chemical storage tank from Freedom Industries in early January. This problem is peculiar because the reports have said that the spill had been occurring for an extended period of time, which shouldn’t have happened under the federal CWA or the other water protection laws at the state level. To be able to discharge chemical waste into a waterway, the CWA requires that the disposer obtain a permit that states the strict regulations of the CWA. This suggests that there has been some lapse in the enforcement within the state, because there had to have been a plan in place when the permit was obtained, but at some point the discharge went outside of the parameters of the CWA and life threatening effects on the environment and West Virginia residents.
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