The next time you hear someone from the fossil fuel industry claim that they're being hampered by gummint regulations, consider this story out of West Virginia, where the Governor has declared a state of emergency in 9 counties due to yesterday's spill of a toxic chemical used in coal production. Some 300,000 people can't use their water for any purposes other than flushing toilets due to the contamination of a chemical abbreviated as MCHM that leaked from a Freedom Industries facility on the Elk River. (Freedom Industries, that's rich. Freedom from giving a damn about public safety if it adversely affects your bottom line, right?)
Once the damage is contained, and the cleanup is completed, we're betting that an investigation will show that this disaster could have been avoided if Freedom Industries were paying more attention to safeguarding the deadly chemicals it produces than its balance sheet.
