With two major contamination events occurring within miles of the Charleston, WV in as many months, residents have been left without clean drinking water. After a chemical accident in 2008, The United States Chemical Safety Board appealed to the state to create a new program to prevent future accidents and releases. However, their pleas went unheard and the state is now yet again facing severe consequences due to the negligence of “King Coal,” despite the Upper Big Branch mine collapse that occurred merely a year later, highlighting the need for stricter regulations on coal companies.
In fact, enforcement has become so lax and these accidents so commonplace that this area has earned the name “Chemical Valley” – but not because of manufacturing. So why do companies like Freedom Industries and Patriot Coal get away with preventable accidents? Even in 2009, there was a known level of corruption that led to weak regulations and weaker enforcements – “enforcement efforts had been undermined by bureaucratic disorganization” and there is “a departmental preference to let polluters escape punishment if they promised to try harder” in the WV Dept. of Environmental Protection.
Of course, when these accidents lead to scenes like this, perhaps they should receive national attention:
The EPA, however, decided to impose stricter regulations in 2012. Their solution? “Discourage new coal fired power plants from being built, which will substantially dampen domestic coal demand”. However, dampening domestic coal demand did not prevent these accidents, or the coal ash spill in NC that occurred in between the two spills in WV. Real regulations coupled with real enforcement need to be implemented; these accidents are preventable, and the EPA needs to start holding “King Coal” accountable.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/13/us/critics-say-chemical-spill-highlights-lax-west-virginia-regulations.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/11/us/west-virginia-slurry-spill/
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/02/new-coal-ash-spill-west-virginia
http://www.statejournal.com/story/24691929/coal-slurry-leak-reported-in-kanawha-county-wv
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/04/03/epas-new-regulations-hit-king-coal-railroad-companies/
Images:
http://WOWK.images.worldnow.com/images/24691929_BG1.jpg
http://a.abcnews.com/images/US/ap_wv_chemical_spill_kb_140110_16x9_992.jpg