From Guest Blogger Cameron Atwood: West Virginia Poisoners Off Scott Free?
West Virginia’s secretary of Health and Human Resources, Karen Bowling, said, “It’s hard to instill confidence when there’s little known about the chemical, but at the same time we have to trust in the science of what’s happening.” …in other words, we need to trust the science we don’t have.
I researched this stuff a bit, and the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) on this chemical – 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol – states that it has been banned from everything but R&D purposes across Canada, Japan, South Korea and the European Union. Yet, here in the US, we have only limited testing done (LD50 on rats and minnows and skin tests on rabbits) and no cancer studies… and we allow it to be used for common industrial processes (like cleaning coal), and to be stored – without regulation – right on the edge of rivers that supply potable water to major communities. Apparently, West Virginia law requires inspections on chemical production facilities, it does not require them for facilities used for chemical storage. The last time this (named with cruel irony) “Freedom Industries” facility was inspected was over two decades ago, in 1991.
Here’s an article about the spill that was carried across the wires on multiple news sites.
I don’t usually pay very much attention to the comments on a new story, but this one from “Stanley Bonk” caught my eye:
“Just so everyone knows, none of the companies are real. They’re all shells. Freedom Industries has only four people on its staff. The company that owns it is a husband and wife in Indiana. They stored chemicals made by Talon industries, whose CEO is in investment advisor at Chase Manhattan. Talon, in turn is the supplier of products made by Georgia Pacific, a company purchased by the Koch Brothers back in 2008. One again, an incident of unregulated pollution and a chain of corrupt organizations leads us back to the doors of Koch industries.”
Here are a few other news stories that contain information consistent with many aspects of this comment:
http://www.examiner.com/article/koch-brothers-ties-to-west-virginia-chemical-spill
http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401120056
http://www.triplepundit.com/2014/01/koch-connection-west-virginia-chemical-spill-company/
Bottom line, the ownership of the companies responsible (whether they’re held as such or not) were quite obviously operating with mammoth stupidity and/or callous disregard for the safety of the surrounding communities. There’s a long train of similar abuses and usurpations stretching back from the scores killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, through the thousands killed in Union Carbide’s Bhopal disaster, to TEPCO’s incompetent design in Fukushima and its subsequent mishandling of its devastated reactors that still threaten ongoing disaster.
This time, as has so often happened in the past, it appears that “Freedom Industries” will attempt to declare bankruptcy and liquidate its assets, and that the human beings responsible will just walk away. Indeed, so far have we now trodden down the bleak and lawless path of “deregulation” that it seems what they’ve done isn’t – in the strictest sense – even illegal.
As Rousseau observed, “the more violent the passions are, the more are laws necessary to keep them under restraint.” Greed seems among the most violent of passions, since there is no limit – be it fraud, bribery, theft, assault, murder, war, or genocide – that is beyond its foul reach. It seems therefore that greed, if we are to minimize its potential for evil, will require among the most severe of shackles.
As additional background, readers may be interested in this excerpt from an article by William River’s Pitt this past Friday 1/17/14:
As it turns out, that state had no plan available to deal with a situation like the Elk River spill, even though the Freedom Industries spill site is a couple of good golf shots away from a drinking water intake. This sounds utterly deranged until you realize just how thoroughly West Virginia is owned by the coal industry. Only one member of West Virginia’s Congressional delegation – Sen. Jay Rockefeller – came out in favor of tighter regulations in the aftermath of the spill. The rest of them, every single one of them, said no, wait, well, ahem, and hem, and haw, and furthermore no, let’s not jump to conclusions…let me get back to you, I have to cash this sooty check.
The site of the spill had not undergone either a state or federal inspection since 1991, so of course House Speaker John Boehner chimed in with the rest of most of the West Virginia delegation by saying, “We have enough regulations on the books,” before blaming Obama, of course. Interestingly enough, on the very same day the Elk River spill occurred, Boehner’s own GOP foot-soldiers in the House passed a bill gutting a number of environmental protections, effectively putting an end to the “Superfund” program.
And in one last cruel twist of the knife, the officials in West Virginia who had no plan to deal with a situation like this announced midway through the week that the clean-up was doing well, and that residents in certain areas could use the water again. Almost immediately, emergency rooms in those areas were flooded with people suffering from symptoms that happen when you drink 4-methylcyclohexane methanol…and as for the people who sought clean water from tankers brought in to provide relief, well, not so much, because it appears those tankers were filled with the same tainted water that is still coming out of the taps.
Beat that with a stick.
In certain dark corners of the internet where gruesome concepts like “collective punishment” are celebrated, voices of derision were raised against the residents of West Virginia affected by this calamity. You voted for the people who made this policy, they said, and now you’re getting the return on your investment. Noted economist Robert Reich laid the stomp on that line of thinking in a Wednesday morning Facebook post that cuts the whole issue to the bone in two paragraphs:
“Last week’s massive toxic chemical spill into West Virginia Elk River illustrates another benefit to the business class of high unemployment, economic insecurity, and a safety-net shot through with holes. Not only are employees docile, eager to accept whatever crumbs they can get. The public is also quiescent and unwilling to cause trouble. The spill was the region’s third major chemical accident in five years, coming after two investigations by the federal Chemical Safety Board in the Kanawha Valley, also known as “Chemical Valley,” and repeated recommendations from federal regulators and environmental advocates that the state embrace tougher rules to better safeguard chemicals. But state and local lawmakers turned a deaf ear. As Maya Nye, president of People Concerned About Chemical Safety, a citizen’s group formed after a 2008 explosion and fire killed workers at West Virginia’s Bayer CropScience plant in the state, told the Times: “We are so desperate for jobs in West Virginia we don’t want to do anything that pushes industry out.” Exactly.
“For years political scientists have wondered why the citizens of West Virginia and other poorer states vote against their economic interests, hypothesizing it’s because economic issues have been preempted by others like guns, abortion, and race. But as wages keep sinking and economic security disappears, it’s also because people are so desperate for jobs they’ll vote whatever way industry wants them to. Bottom line: A strong and growing middle class is the best bulwark against corporate irresponsibility.”
And so much for blaming the victims.