So what happens to a West Virginia community when incompetent industry contaminates the water supply of 300,000 people in 9 counties? About Thursday morning January 9 2014, the Freedom Industries aging "tank farm" began leaking Crude MCHM into the Elk river in Charleston WV, about 1.5 miles upstream from the intake of West Virginia Water's intake. The slick of concentrated chemical (used to wash coal) was pumped in and distributed through the water system, sickening many (>500 emergency room visits). By 5:30 an order had been issued by the Governor Earl Ray Tomblin (D) not to drink or bath in the water. Interestingly, the West Virginia Legislature were all in town for their limited annual work session, so they were exposed to the chemical themselves and were forced to address legislative improvements to the storage of large volumes of chemicals along the waterways of the state.
The past two months have shed a lot of information on what happened during the leak, but there remain many unanswered health questions, including:
> Is the water safe to drink (especially for the pregnant and children)?
> What was the immediate and long lasting harm to the citizens exposed to crude MCHM.
But the most amazing and inspiring thing I have seen has been the rising up of the local citizens to demand an open accounting of the events that happened. Something is happening here that I haven't seen in my 15 years in West Virginia. The community is coming together through social networking and traditional reporting (the local news media have actually been investigating and reporting). And the best sign I have seen has been the Facebook Community, "The Friends of Water."
Please keep reading about how you can help us organize and stay posted on what is happening in response to a failed government in the pocket of big business. Be prepared to smile if you keep reading below the orange kringle.
So Friends of Coal is a West Virginia organization funded by the West Virginia Coal Association to get local people involved in lobbying the state to allow the Coal Industry to continue mining with a minimum of regulation. Essentially coal industry is saying, Nice jobs you have there, West Virginia. Shame if EPA makes us close down the state's mining and burning coal for energy.
They buy billboards all over the state and sponsor scholarships to the university. They use their money to buy product placement at sporting events. They sponser a NASCAR driver and car. They sponsored a Marshall University vs WVU football game (until this year, when ironically, Marshall finally had a better team than WVU). They sponsored a giant logo on a basketball floor in the Charleston Civic Arena where all the state tournaments are played.
This is their logo:
Beginning to smile yet?
How about the irony when they start giving out drinking water with their logo during the drinking water crisis?
link
"Friends of Water" launched as a Facebook site on January 8, 2014, in the wake of the leak from the badly maintained facilities of Freedom Industries. They state
"Clean water is a basic human right, together we demand a public water supply free of chemicals, toxins and contaminants. Join us in our fight."
And fighting they are! They have over 14,000 followers on Facebook and are a great source of the latest information on water safety issues and the political response to this industrial disaster.
They are leading the charge against SB 474/HB4411 loosening regulation of disposal of fracking waste in West Virginia landfills.
They are using social media to create powerful images that get to the bottom of the issue. Why should we in WV accept radioactive waste from fracking sites, filled with who knows what chemicals, in our landfills and pollute our groundwater?
They are using humor to emphasize that getting drinking tap water back "on line" has been messed up here.
First CDC said OK to drink, then they said pregnant women shouldn't drink it. Then the schools had the smell of licorice and people feeling sick. Friends of Water published this image to summarize the CDC double talk. I am a fan of CDC, but there is no doubt they have not done well responding to this crisis.
It was back to flushing again, while Friends of Water and others are running clean water drives for people who still won't drink the water.
Friends of Water and others have called attention to coal slurry "black water" spills and published images that emphasize how insane this industry is.
Friends of Water brought my attention to a group of young West Virginians making a documentary about the West Virginia Water Crisis called
"Sweet Taste of Freedom." They are selling hilarious tee-shirts to raise funds for the film.
And now, Friends of Water is also sponsoring a
tee shirt sale with their logo to raise funds to buy a billboard in Charleston WV. They need to raise $8000 and I am in for $80 myself at $20 a shirt! If you don't want to give them some funds, then friend their Facebook page- they are currently at 14,400 odd likes, and most of them seem to be local. Be warned- they are ACTIVE- posting 3-5 times a day. But they are just great! Through them I have learned about Aquapocalypse and other great facebook pages from the community organizing in response to this crisis.
I will close with this powerful image:
And this excerpt from a powerful prayer from a recent rally.
Take a pebble. Drop it in water. Watch the ripples on the water.
If we want to make change, we must be willing to ripple the water. And if the first stone is too small and the ripples lose energy, we must be ready to drop another pebble, perhaps a larger pebble, generating larger, more powerful ripples. And when those ripples lose energy, we must be ready to drop the next pebble, and the next, and the next.
Read the whole of the prayer here and share the ripples of change.