Bombshell: Not One W. Va. Official Under Oath Would Say Water Is Safe

Over a month after Freedom Industries, a group of other corporations, and government officials allegedly  poisoned as many as 300,000 men, women and children, not one of the seven officials under oath testifying Monday at a federal congressional hearing in Charleston would say the area’s water is safe, despite their former “safe water” declarations, telling people to use it, and cutting clean water distribution for weeks.

Freedom, other corporations involved in the alleged crime, and the military WMD team aids, were MIA at the hearing where they, too, would have been under oath.

“Nobody sitting here is willing to say the water is safe,” said Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., who led the hearing Monday at the Kanawha County Courthouse in Charleston. 

Shuster said he guessed the refusal now to say whether or not the water is safe was an effort to avoid potential lawsuits. 

That might be a bit late, however, for some of the lawmakers and “clean coal” king Governor Earl Ray Tomblin’s health-related appointees, like Dr. Lititia Tierney, Tomblin’s commissioner of the state Bureau for Public Health.

“That [the water is safe] is a difficult thing to say because everyone has a different definition of safe,” Tierney now says, after publicly declaring the water was safe and blaming West Virginia victims for their poisoning symptoms.

Tierney has also accused people poisoned and suffering chemical exposure symptoms of poor hygiene, mental health issues, as well as there being a  lot of “flu.”

Like saying a woman is only “a little pregnant” or “kind of” pregnant, Federal lawmakers leading the hearing learned a private company’s October inspection of Freedom’s tank farm along the Elk River found its tanks were kind of compliant: The tanks weren’t “necessarily in full compliance” with federal standards.

The chemical spill, that the state admitted on Jan. 9 but that locals say had begun weeks earlier, finally overwhelmed the private local water corporation, the West Virginia American Water Co. treatment plant.

That resulted in a do-not-use order for almost 20 percent of West Virginia’s population.

There was no do-not-inhale order or subsequent evacuations. That was despite the National Guard and even military Weapons of Mass Destruction teams deployed to the area to aid in the crisis. It was also despite the National Terror Alert Response Center’s protocol for areas under chemical exposure.

[Read: Nat’l Terror Alert: What To Do In West Va. Chemical Attack]

Water company president Jeff McIntyre and Rafael Moure-Eraso, Chemical Safety Board chairman, also testified. They appeared before four members of a nearly 60-member U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

The hearing Chairman Bill Shuster was joined by Reps. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. heavily funded by the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel barons, and Daniel Webster, R-Fla. a Kanawha County native. 

[See: Best 3 Water Safety Lies $2M Can Buy In West Virginia]

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., another fossil fuel industry puppet, was invited to Monday’s hearing and allowed to ask questions at Monday’s hearing.

About those other hundreds of chemicals aside from MCHM, PHh, and Formaldehyde

The hearing exposed another bombshell: ”There is an odor emanating from Freedom Industries, and it’s not licorice,” stated Congressman Nick Rahall.

“Just because you can smell something doesn’t mean it’s not safe,” the private water corporation’s president Jeff McIntyre said, contradicting toxicologists’ warnings when a chemical leak has occurred – and even common sense.

Five schools in the affected area closed last week after chemical poisons were so strong, they were not only smelled. Children and teachers were also passing out, vomiting and experiencing other common symptoms of poisoning that sent at least two to the hospital.

Toxicologists even warn, “Just because you can’t smell it does not mean you aren’t being poisoned.” (See: Vampire of Macondo.)

MCHM, PHh and formaldehyde are among known chemicals in the water supply, thanks to independent scientists.

Those scientists have been testing chemicals other than the MCHM, the only one government officials had been saying it was testing and basing its “safe water” declarations. That is, aside from the U.S. military’s Weapons of Mass Destruction teams’ tests, still under cover.

The military WMD teams went to Ground Zero to “assist the West Virginia National Guard’s 35th CST with the collection, data entry and transport of water samples for evaluation.”  

[Read: WMD Military Boots-On-Ground Teams Researching West Virginia Water, They Say]

Missing in action were Freedom President Gary Southern and members of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who were invited.

Others missing were representatives from the military WMD teams and other companies involved in West Virginia’s ongoing humanitarian crisis: Nalco, that holds the patent to one of the chemicals in the water, MCHM, and Eastman. (The list of chemicals on Eastman’s ‘Crude MCHM’ MSDS sheet list of chemicals is close to impurities the company lists on their CHDM specification sheets.) 

Seven residents were at the hearing and allowed to address the committee.

Sue Bird, who said she’s lived in the area over 70 years, said she and fellow residents have asked for more attention to chemical safety for years. Like many residents have said, she told McIntyre she’d never trust the water again.

“Another resident asked when the water would stop smelling,” the Daily Mail reports.

No one answered.

Sources: Charleston Daily Mail, Before It’s News, Vampire of Macondo