More Poison Water – Will It Ever Stop?
Flint, Mich. is once again in the news for all wrong reasons. As if the city hasn’t endured enough through impoverishment and a rapid rise in violent crime, thanks largely to “free trade” boondoggles that sent GM and other industries to Mexico, Flint is now under a state of emergency because of lead in its tap water that is poisoning its residents. Nearly two years ago, the state decided to save money by switching Flint's water supply from Lake Huron, to the Flint River, a notoriously filth tributary that runs through town. To Flint’s residents, this announcement seemed like something one would find on the satirical Onion website. In other words, a joke, given the Flint River’s widespread reputation as being highly corrosive and full of toxic waste. Unfortunately, the announcement was all too real, and to no one’s surprise, Flint’s citizens are now paying with their health, as a result of being made to pay for toxic water. Since the entire point of the exercise was to cut corners and pinch pennies, it should come as no surprise that the state completely ignored federal law that required Flint River water to be treated with anti-corrosive agents to have any chance of being potable. According to experts, at a cost of about $100 per day, treatment with these anti-corrosives could have prevented 90 percent of the problems with Flint’s water. Instead, the corrosive water was permitted to course through Flint’s lead-lined pipes, causing widespread leaching of that lead, a highly potent neurotoxin, into the drinking water flowing to resident’s homes. The results have been a predictable litany of neurological and other health problems for Flint’s children, who are most susceptible to lead toxicity, and other residents.
Sadly for us West Virginians, poisoning of our precious waterways in service to the almighty dollar is an all too familiar tragedy here at home. For instance, we may never stop hearing about the impact of DuPont’s insidious poisoning of Parkersburg in our lifetimes, give the sheer scale of the illicit dumping of PFOA into Parkersburg’s waterways and the decades-long harm that will continue to plague local residents. PFOA was a chemical that DuPont extensively studied, conclusively learned was toxic to humans, concluded should not be disposed of in public waterways, but did it anyway – for decades. And who could forget about Freedom Industries recent poisoning of Charleston’s Elk River with MCHM, the long-term effects of which are still being studied and shown to be worse than previously disclosed. With barely regulated natural gas fracking and a republican-controlled “open for business” legislature, you can be sure that we will continue to suffer the same kind of tragedies that Flint’s citizens are struggling with.
With all this poisoning happening, repeatedly, throughout our great state, you would think that we could find a legislative majority of actual human beings on this issue who might make preservation of our natural resources – the very lifeblood of West Virginian’s survival – a priority in this, or any, legislative session. But even a cursory glance at the Senate GOP’s agenda for the 2016 session would show you how wrong you are. Far from trying to prevent these types of tragedies from continuing to occur, the GOP seemingly wants to do everything it can to guarantee they continue to happen. You won’t find any attempts to strengthen environmental or chemical inspection regulations on their agenda. No attempts to strengthen fracking regulations. No attempt to address the more than 60,000 mystery chemicals, like DuPont’s PFOA or Freedom’s MCHM, whose toxicity has never been studied but that are nevertheless routinely dumped into our environment. Instead, the majorities’ number one priority this legislative session is to try, once again, to strip you, the ordinary West Virginia citizen, of your Seventh Amendment rights to take companies like this to court when they poison the water we all must share. The corporate welfare agenda is certainly well represented by the GOP’s agenda this session, and they seem determined to carve the widest path for large scale corporate profiteering, by taking away your Constitutional Rights and giving Corporate America carte blanche to further exploit West Virginia’s natural riches for its own, personal gain, while allowing Corporate America to also use West Virginia as its own personal toilet down which to flush those inconvenient, “cost-of-doing-business,” truths like the fact that the chemicals they profit from are toxic to life. While the GOP’s priorities may go a long way towards lining their politician’s campaign coffers, they come at the expense of the very electorate they swore an oath to represent. The only way to combat this is to speak up this legislative session and let your local legislators know you support and demand the regulation of corporate polluters and see if they do anything to address these issues. If not, at least you’ll know who not to vote for next time.
