A chemical spill left the water source for 300,000 people in and around West Virginia’s capital stained blue-green and smelling like licorice, and officials said Friday it was unclear when it might be safe again to drink water from the Elk River, or even use it for showers and laundry.
Federal authorities began investigating how the foaming agent escaped a chemical plant and seeped into the river. Just how much of the chemical, 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol, or MCHM, leaked into the river was not yet known.
Officials were working with the company that makes the chemical to determine its toxicity, said West Virginia American Water president Jeff McIntyre.
“We don’t know that the water’s not safe. But I can’t say that it is safe,” McIntyre said Friday.
For now, there is no way to treat the tainted water aside from flushing the regional water purification system until concentrations of the chemical fall — a process that could take days.
Officials and experts said MCHM, even in its most concentrated form, isn’t deadly. However, people across nine counties were told not to use the affected water even for washing clothes because the chemical can cause symptoms ranging from skin irritation and rashes to vomiting and diarrhea.
Six people had come to emergency rooms with symptoms that may have stemmed from MCHM, but none was in serious or critical condition, said State Department of Health & Human Resources Secretary Karen L. Bowling.
The company where the leak occurred, Freedom Industries, discovered around 10:30 a.m. Thursday that the chemical was leaking from the bottom of a storage tank, its president, Gary Southern, said at a press conference. Southern said the company worked all day and through the night to remove the chemical from the site.
“We have the mitigated the risk, we believe, in terms of further material leaving this facility,” he said.
The spill brought West Virginia’s most populous city and nearby areas to a standstill, closing schools and offices and even forcing the Legislature to cancel its business for the day. Officials focused on getting water to people who needed it, particularly the elderly and disabled.
“If you are low on bottled water, don’t panic because help is on the way,” Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said at a news conference.
Tomblin said there was no shortage of bottled water, and that officials were working to get water to those who need it. The Federal Emergency Management Agency also planned to deliver more than a million liters of water from nearby Maryland.
Several companies were sending bottled water and other supplies, including Pepsi and Coca-Cola, Tomblin said.
Nevertheless, at a grocery store in the shadow of a DuPont chemical plant along the Kanawha River, people scrambled in the aisles to find bottled water.
Robert Stiver said he had visited a dozen stores in the area, trying in vain to find bottled water, and he was worried about how he’d make sure his cats had drinkable water.
“I’m lucky. I can get out and look for water. But what about the elderly? They can’t get out. They need someone to help them,” he said.
That’s what Dan Scott was doing: Taking care of his 81-year-old mother, Bonnie Wireman, and others in the area.
“She forgot a few times and stuck her hand in the kitchen sink. When she realized what she did, she took out alcohol and washed her hands. Scrubbed them. She was really scared,” he said.
MCHM is mixed with ground-up coal to separate it from soil and rock particles, said Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute. Even at its current concentrations, however, the chemical is unlikely to cause any serious harm, he said.
“You’d have to drink something like 1,700 gallons of water to even approach a lethal dose,” he said.
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