WV Government Willing To Say Anything About Water, Except That It Is "Safe" - RS
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At the time of the spill, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat, issued a strict do-not-use order for tap water, which lasted in some areas for 10 days. Businesses shuttered, schools closed, people mobbed grocery stores only to find empty water shelves. A mere four days after the spill, on January 13th, Governor Tomblin and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began lifting the ban in phases, explaining that they had established guidelines on acceptable MCHM levels in the water, and that these had been met. But two days after that, on January 15th, the Centers for Disease Control issued a statement warning pregnant women to avoid ingesting tap water. In the same letter, in an effort to calm everyone else, the agency insisted that it "does not anticipate any adverse health effects" for the rest of the population. But "does not anticipate" feels a long way from "safe." Sharon Satterfield and her family, like many of the region's residents—who are not the type to be skittish about chemicals — don't believe official assurances that the water is clean. Sitting in a recliner in his living room, Archie, who's 44, well groomed and wears a spotless white t-shirt, says he doesn't trust the water. "We don't know if it's going affect us in five years, or ten years, or even next week."
This stance is perfectly understandable given that Governor Tomblin and Jeff McIntyre, president of WVAW, have yet to definitively state that the water is safe. Instead they have variously described it as "appropriate" and "usable for all purposes." At a hearing in Charleston on February 10th, when pressed to unambiguously confirm the water's safety, Letitia Tierney, Commissioner of the state Bureau for Public Health, responded, hardly reassuringly, "That's, in a way, a difficult thing to say because everybody has a different definition of safe." Apparently the West Virginia leaders handling the crisis also believe that everyone has a different definition of what's right and what's sane. Tierney's equivocation echoed the governor's hedge on the safety question at an earlier press conference. Instead of providing clear information, Tomblin dumped responsibility on the individual. "I'm not going to say absolutely, 100 percent, that everything is safe," he said. "It's your decision."
So decide is what hundreds of thousands of people on the Elk River water supply must now do, leading to a distinct sense of unease in a valley where hardship is no stranger. A 2013 Gallup-Healthways survey found West Virginia to have the lowest state of wellbeing in the country — for the fifth straight year. According to the study, state residents had the country's highest rates of cholesterol and blood pressure, and its second highest rate of obesity. Their emotional health is also suffering: residents of no other state had as negative an outlook on the future. And now, with the MCHM spill, those living in Chemical Valley have sustained another blow.
In Charleston things appear normal — businesses are open, the National Guard is gone, the tanker trucks of clean water are no longer idling in strip-mall parking lots — but scratch the surface and it's clear that the emergency is not over. Behind the counter at a café sit two five-gallon tanks of bottled water hooked up to the coffee machines. At a local eatery, when I order a soda, the bartender explains that it comes from the tap. "Are you sure you don't just want bottled water?" he asks. Grocery stores still can't keep their water shelves stocked. Talk to people on the street and you're told that no one drinks from the tap. Some people bathe in it, others use it to wash their clothes, but almost no one trusts it.
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http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/dont-drink-the-water-west-virginia-after-the-chemical-spill-20140312