State acknowledges it had no plan for Freedom spill
By Ken Ward Jr.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Emergency planners at the state and federal level have conceded that they never put together any strategy for dealing with spills of a toxic chemical from the Freedom Industries' tank farm, despite its location just 1.5 miles upstream from a drinking water intake serving 300,000 people.
Officials on Tuesday acknowledged the lack of such a plan, but state officials say a key federal law -- passed after major chemical accidents, including one nearly 30 years ago in Kanawha County -- did not specifically require a release of the material Crude MCHM to be modeled or planned for.
Still, experts say that it defies common sense for federal and state regulators to have done so little to consider the potential impacts, given the close proximity of Freedom's operations to the West Virginia American Water intake on the Elk River.
"Much remains to be investigated in the catastrophe -- managerial competency, local, state and federal competency, regulatory sufficiency and ultimately the public culture that protects or weakens the security of essential infrastructure," said industrial safety expert Gerald Poje, a former member of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.
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