ALJAZEERA: …When West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection inspectors visited Freedom Industries where a chemical spill into a river caused 300,000 to lose access to clean water last week, they found a 400-sq-foot pool of the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane-methanol, or MCHM, sitting outside of one of Freedom Industries’ tanks.
Freedom Industries hadn’t told the DEP about the spill — regulators were there because of nearby residents’ complaints about a funny smell coming from the company’s storage facilities…
It’s not clear how long the chemical had been leaking into the river before it was discovered by DEP, but it’s also not clear — at least from a legal standpoint — that anything went wrong. The patchwork of lax state and federal regulations governing chemical storage facilities like those owned by Freedom Industries allowed the company to go uninspected for decades. And loopholes in environmental laws may mean that the disposal of potentially harmful chemicals into the Elk River — whether intentional or not — was perfectly legal… (more)
