Who Owns West Virginia's Water? A Cautionary Tale

[Lasher]

This is the best analysis I have seen so far about the crisis. I just cross-posted it in Good Reads.

It took a few days after a state of emergency was declared across nine West Virginia counties and one-sixth of the state's population was told not to drink or bathe using their tap water for the national news media to discover a story of national importance occurring in the political backwaters of Appalachia.

But most haven't yet picked up on what may be the most interesting and important detail: why so many people in this water-rich state depend on a single, privately-owned treatment system and distribution network that sprawls across nine counties for their supply of drinking water.

<snip>

The paper trail of the state's Public Service Commission filings that document the dramatic expansion of WVAWC's water network over the past two decades (see map below) reveals similar stories happening again and again, as the company gobbled up one municipal utility after another, as well as individual homes whose wells were polluted by coal mining activities.

<snip>

The fact that 16 percent of the state's population depends on WVAWC's Kanawha Valley Water Treatment Facility for drinking water is a central factor in the scale of the disaster and, as the PSC paper trail demonstrates, the coal industry has a lot of culpability in that situation as well. But still other factors have led to the expansion and consolidation of WVAWC's service territory, which is why the moral of this story applies beyond coal country.

The West Virginia chemical spill is a cautionary tale for communities all over the country where multinational companies are coming in and buying up municipal water utilities to manage people's drinking water supply for profit. And factors beyond groundwater pollution by the coal industry are driving those trends, such as systemic under-investment in public water systems by federal, state and local governments, and the rapaciousness with which private companies, aided by political favoritism and lobbying, are pursuing expansion of their influence, customer base and profit margins.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-wasson/who-owns-west-virginias-water_b_4611443.html

[PRETZEL]

1. Interesting article,

there are some things that I would be interested in looking at closer.

One question, and in this regard, the issue of the incorporation of the many smaller, municipality owned, water systems obviously were eaten up by WVAWC. And in the Kanawha Valley, they seem to be the only game in town, but it does need to be asked about the viability of those smaller municipal water authorities to be able to survive and maintain the equipment given the economics of the region. It seemed that the median incomes for some of the counties would suggest that the municipal water authorities may not have been able to generate the revenue necessary to maintain the system. Shifting the costs to WVAWC may have been a necessary alternative.

I'm also not sure whether the practice of filling old mines with coal slurry is an old or new practice. I honestly don't know the mining history well enough. But, and maybe we may disagree, but I'm not so sure the the coal companies would have partnered with water authorities anyway, especially if they've been this as accepted practice. In this regard, federal regulations (or state regulations) should have addressed this and if they weren't being enforced, then I would think it's a question not necessarily between for the WVAWC. But, thats just my own opinion.

Not knowing much about this and the coal industry, I'm wondering if the use of MCHM was a result of changes in federal standards for clean coal and it's use rushed before the effects were fully understood?

[Lasher]

2. Smaller municipality-owned water systems were doing fine without WVAWC.

In my area we already had a water system with its own treatment plant. It was paid for with Federal, State, and County money in addition to funds from subscriber payments. Everything was running fine. Then our County Commission was approached by people representing private investors (from Germany, I think) who offered to buy it. My County Commissioners went for it. Over time, other area systems (each with its own treatment plant) were bought up and connected to the WVAWC pipelines. Their treatment plants were all shut down after that, in favor of the single plant in Charleston. That's how all 300,000 of us ended up with a single water source in the heart of West Virginia's Chemical Valley.

These community-owned-and-operated water systems had no fiscal problems as you have supposed. Nearby systems that were not privatized include the Putnam and the Boone-Raliege Public Services Districts and doing just fine and their customers were unaffected by the WVAWC calamity. If economics had any impact on the sale of these publicly owned assets, it was the motivation of County Commissioners to have all that money to spend without having to raise taxes to get it.

About filling old underground coal mines with slurry: I haven't researched this but I'm pretty sure this practice is a recent development. I've lived here in the southern West Virginia coal fields all my life and I never heard of it until about 10 years ago.

I hope that helps you some. That's all the time I have for right now. I'm going to go back to the HuffPo article later and read a couple of the other articles that are hot linked in it.

[PRETZEL]

3. Thanks Lasher

your info has answered alot of questions.

[Lasher]

4. I've been thinking about this for a long time and I'm not through.

I think I first posted about the issue at DU was 7 years ago.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2643589#2644952

I'll be doing more research as time permits.

[Petrushka]

5. If I'm not mistaken, American Water was owned by Europe's largest energy conglomerate . . .

. . . namely, RWE AG, a German multinational company --->

http://www.publicintegrity.org/search?query=RWE+and+American+Water&submit=Search#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=RWE%20and%20American%20Water&gsc.page=1

http://www.waternunc.com/gb/rwe_ag_01.htm


Also: For what it's worth, CONSOL Energy was a joint venture between RWE AG & DuPont . . . Consolidation Coal Company being the "forefather" of CONSOL Energy.

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/consol-energy-inc-history/



P.S.
That's the same Consolidation Coal whose shield-support longwall mining system with its intentional subsidence technique has been damaging and/or dewatering private water supplies and natural water sources in rural areas of northern West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania since the mid-70s. But . . . (** sigh **) . . . that's neither here not there, is it?

[Lasher]

6. American Water was owned by German-based RWE Group until 2008.

Then it was spun off as an IPO. Their headquarters is in Voorhees, New Jersey.

Wikipedia Article about American Water (company)

[Petrushka]

7. The first large-scale test of backfilling with slurry in the US was made in Scranton PA . . .

Last edited Thu Jan 23, 2014, 06:32 AM - Edit history (2)

. . . 1972-73 by the Bureau of Mines. Results of that test can be found at the following link (beginning on page 20):

http://archive.org/stream/pumpedslurryback00cola/pumpedslurryback00cola_djvu.txt

You'll notice that it was in abandoned mine workings where the test was conducted. However . . .

"Hydraulic backfilling was developed during the late 1800s and early 1900s and was used in about one-fourth of the anthracite mines for such purposes as to extinguish mine fires, to arrest the development of progressive pillar failure known as mine squeeze, to permit the reclaiming of pillars, to dispose of unwanted mine refuse, and to protect the surface. The practice of backfilling by the coal industry in the United States decreased after World War I with the decline of the anthracite industry. In domestic bituminous coal mining operations, backfilling has never been common practice." (emphasis added)

http://www.techtransfer.osmre.gov/NTTMainSite/Library/pub/psb/section1.pdf

FWIW: In northern West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania---where water sources and supplies continue to be damaged and destroyed---some of the damage and destruction by the intentional subsidence from shield-support longwall mining could have been (might yet be?) reduced by backfilling or backstowing mine wastes. But then, again . . . (** tsk **) . . . it's obviously more "technologically and economically feasible" to simply continue dumping mine wastes in every available hollow, burying more streams.
-----------------------

Edited to add:
Years ago, I became aware that backstowing of mine wastes was mandatory in Germany; and, therefore, it was more than a little disturbing to realize how Germany's RWE/Rheinbraun (the then-parent company of our friendly neighborhood coal operator) was sorta undermining water sources and supplies but not backstowing! Anyway . . .

The following link should give some indication of what other folks can expect if/when longwall mining begins deliberately subsiding in their neck of the woods, too:

http://www.scottchurchdirect.com/ted-williams.aspx/sagging-streams?pg=1





(As we used to say way-back-when: "Take that gob and shove it . . . . . . back in the mine!&quot