Big Citizens Water Party at WV State Capitol, March 8th @ 11am

Fracking beside creek

Subject: Big Citizen Water Party at WV Capitol On Saturday

Update from Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC), March 6, 2014

Gather your family and friends and come out to the Big, Big, BIG Citizen Water Party this Saturday, March 8. Join us at 11 a.m. on the Senate side of the Rotunda. Meet up with friends old and new, listen to some inspiring speakers, groove to cool musicians, find out ways you can stay engaged after the legislative session and send a message to legislators: We demand clean water, we demand you serve the public (not the polluter) interest and we’ll remember your actions when we head to the voting booths.

Even if some version of the water / tank bill passes before Saturday, which is the last day of the 2014 legislative session, we need you at this event to let legislators know this is only a first step and we are watching.

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NOTE:  The following paragraphs from the Sustained Outrage blog of Ken Ward, Jr. of the Charleston Gazette dated February 27th . .  AST is “above ground storage tank(s).”

Readers who are closely following the continuing West Virginia water crisis may recall that three weeks ago, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman gave a congressional committee some preliminary figures about the numbers of above-ground chemical storage tanks located near drinking water supplies around the state:

This investigation is still in its early stages, but so far, it has yielded an estimate of about 600 facilities housing approximately 3500 tanks across the State. Further investigation has determined that more than 100 of these – with as many as 1000 ASTs - may exist within an area that could impact a public drinking water source.

We’ve been trying for a while to get a list of those tanks, and this morning DEP officials finally provided it. Turns out their continuing investigation has found even more chemical storage tanks located in the “zone of critical concern” near drinking water intakes around West Virginia. Here’s what DEP spokesman Tom Aluise told us in an e-mail message:

Our investigation into the number of Above Ground Storage Tanks (ASTs) in the state is ongoing, but has yielded a preliminary number of just over 100 facilities with ASTs that may sit in a Zone of Critical Concern (ZCC), meaning there is potential to impact a public water drinking source. Those 100-plus facilities have what we’ve estimated to be roughly 1,600 ASTs. We have inspectors in the process of visiting each of the 100-plus facilities to verify the number of ASTs at each site, as well as the contents contained in the ASTs.

I’ve posted copies of two lists provided by DEP. This one contains the facilities covered by “individual” water pollution permits and this one contains the facilities that — like Freedom Industries — are covered by the less-detailed and rigorous “general” permits.