WATER JUSTICE IN WEST VIRGINIA

 

Antioch College is a community dedicated to the pursuit of social justice, and has been since Al Denman and Jennifer Berman inscribed this promise in the honor code in the early 1980’s. As such, we’re an academic community which has produced numerous activists. Maya Nye is one such alum.

 

It was a cold winter afternoon when I became aware of this. I was sorting through images of performances dating to the inception of the Antioch Honor Code at the Kitchen in New York when I heard Nye’s voice crackle through my headphones. She was on NPR, responding to questions about the water crisis in West Virginia. I had known Maya as my RLM for a year and a half. But she had dropped everything and had, in true Antiochian spirit, traveled to a region of the world being affected by oppression to lend her organizing skills to a social justice cause. She was being interviewed from the capital of West Virginia, Charleston.

 

The organization NPR cited as her employer, People Concerned About Chemical Safety, was founded in 1984 following the Bhopal disaster in India. (Nye) Drinking water there was contaminated by industrial chemicals such as methyl isocyanate gas. (Nye) Now, the organization was turning its focus to a domestic crisis, one that was unfolding in West Virginia.

 

In January 2014, the “largest chemical contamination of a drinking water system in the US” was underway. (WVDHHR) On the 9th of that month, a tank containing MCHM, a chemical “used to separate debris from coal so it can be used for fuel,” spilled at a coal mining site and infiltrated local water supply systems. (Nye) The state immediately issued a water ban for the affected counties. (Nye) MCHM was one of the 62,000 chemical compounds allowed to be in industrial circulation thanks to the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976. (Safer) The act aimed to leave it to the public to decide whether or not these often harmful chemicals were safe for human interaction, because of the lack of institutional support for research into them. People have been paying for this act with their health.

 

Due to TSCA, no research had been undertaken to understand how to test for MCHM’s presence in the water supply. There was “no toxicological information available for people to know if the water was safe to drink that was coming from the infested Kanawha River.” (Nye) A test for the chemical had not been produced, and the only indication residents had as to whether or not the dangerous chemical was present in their water was the faint licorice smell it gave off. (Nye)

 

Businesses closed, federal aid was shipped in in the form of bottled water, and 100,000 West Virginians exhibited symptoms of MCHM poisoning. (Nye) Unfortunately, this was not the first time Appalachians were subjected to health risks at the hands of the coal industry.

 

The people of Appalachia have often been subjected to abuse by the coal industry because they are, on the whole, less wealthy than the rest of the nation. Mountaintop removal mining consistently threatens natural habitats and drinking water by destroying ecosystems and leaching chemicals into nearby streams through eroded mountain sides. Miners had to go to work in horrible conditions with no protection from coal particulates for a very long stretch of history. The men in the mines had no choice, as jobs were scarce outside of the mines. Many contracted, and still contract, black lung from the dangerous conditions in the mines. They had no recourse. If it were not for the courageous organizing of local mine workers’ unions in places such as Harlan County, KY in the 1970’s, respirators and mandatory health care benefits would not have been instituted for mine workers. When coal dried up, former miners were left with nothing but meager pensions and health care, and of course, black lung.

 

At the heart of what’s at issue in the region of West Virginia that’s been affected by the spill is the exploitation of resources by industry to the detriment of the common good that is embodied by public goods such as common water resources. This country has a belief that a few industrialists should be able to profit from putting the general public at risk. We have seen this time and time again, and it is evidenced by the Ohio legislature allowing fracking to occur in the state (which puts our common resource of groundwater at risk) and by the mere existence of TSCA. How can the government be looking out for the general welfare if they are permitting monied interests’ endangering such an important and essential public good as water?

 

The West Virginia crisis that Maya returned to lecture on is another case in point of this belief. The government and industry collude to encourage such a philosophy. The government of West Virginia sold off its water supply rights to West Virginia American Water. (Nye) This was a mistake because water became another commodity whose proprietor had to make a profit ($349 million in 2013). (Nye) A WVAW supported MSDS underestimated MCHM’s toxicity by 6 times, in what can be seen to be an effort to ensure public faith in a company that’s totally inept at serving its customers. (Nye)

Only by organizing enough members of the public will this abuse stop. I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Cullen Hobeck, a documentary filmmaker who’s documenting WV water activism, at Maya’s lecture. I will be cooping with him in the fall. Much like Harlan Co, USA did for me, the documentary about union organizing around stopping coal companies’ neglect of health concerns for miners, I hope Cullen’s film will get people far away from the crisis excited about getting involved and joining the coalition of the just.

 

 

 

West Virginia Water Lecture, Maya Nye

 

CDC CASPER Survey Released, WVDHHR

 

What is TSCA?, Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families