Friday, January 17, 2014
Associated Press
CHARLESTON, W.Va.
It’s a nightmare scenario that became all too real in West Virginia: A chemical seeped into the water supply and threatened to sicken hundreds of thousands of people.
Though no one became seriously ill from last week’s chemical spill, some homeland-security experts said the emergency was proof the United States has not done nearly enough to protect water systems from accidental spills or deliberate contamination.
Officials found out about the spill when people started calling in complaints about a strong licorice-type smell in the air. West Virginia American Water, which supplies 300,000 people with water in the central part of the state, said it would not have detected the chemical because utilities don’t test for it. Before the spill, no standards existed for measuring the chemical, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, in water, the utility said.
Congress last addressed water security in a 2002 law that required utilities to assess their vulnerabilities and report them to the Environmental Protection Agency, but there was no mandate to correct the shortcomings. Subsequent efforts to establish security regulations for water systems and treatment plants have gone nowhere, despite support from the Obama and Bush administrations.
A law requiring chemical plants to develop security plans was enacted in 2007, but it specifically exempts wastewater-treatment plants even though they use many of the chemicals regulated under the program. Critics said the law did not do much to make chemical plants safer either, because it didn’t give the Department of Homeland Security enough enforcement authority.
A 2009 bill that passed the House but died in the Senate would have given the EPA the authority to enforce the same regulations for water- treatment facilities.
Critics say water-system security isn’t being addressed because there’s never been a wide-scale, deliberate attempt to poison the water supply.
“If this were an intentional poisoning of the water, all of a sudden you would see Congress demanding, ‘Where are the plans? Why hasn’t something been done?’” said Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. “There aren’t the resources to match the problem here. And I’m sure, overtly or covertly, the thinking is, ‘This has never happened.’ No one’s ever poisoned the water system.”
Killing or sickening large numbers of people through water contamination would not be easy. Someone would need access to a large amount of chemicals and be able to dump them in a sensitive spot, which likely would attract attention, said Stephen Flynn, director of the Center for Resilience Studies at Northeastern University.
Though no one became seriously ill in West Virginia, it was hugely disruptive as 300,000 people went without tap water for at least five days. And the long-term effects of exposure to the chemical are unknown.