Best 3 Lies $2M Can Buy In West Virginia

Government officials blame sick West Virginians for their poison symptoms two weeks after the states’ worst environmental event began there, but it’s no wonder when a few of the states’ key political leaders have received some $2 million from Big Energy.

A recent surge in emergency room patients and Poison Control Center calls is due to residents’ poor hygiene causing more “flu,” and residents’ inability to cope with stress causing mental illness, they say – not corporate-tainted water.

That heavy human price is the way it goes when the fossil fuel industry buys elected officials for around 2 million dollars, a low-ball figure for West Virginia elected officials.

Another 100 people have called the Center for Disease Control over the past few days. They’ve each reported suffering from poison symptoms, the West Virginis Poison Control director Dr. Scharman told Before It’s News reporter Deborah Dupré on Thursday afternoon. 

“They’re still reporting mainly the same thing,” Scharman said, “skins rashes and irritations and nausea,” 

Officials, however, blame the poison symptoms on anything but tainted water they told the people to use. One might justifiably think West Virginia officials are following the same secret blueprint that fossil fuel-industry-bought Louisiana state officials used for the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe, Nalco’s other humanitarian catastrophe of the century. 

Nalco owns the patent for using at least one of the chemicals, “Crude MCHM,” in a toxic goo that leaked into 300,000 West Virginian’s water supply two weeks ago today. Nalco also owns the dispersant Corexit, literally carpet-bombed throughout the Gulf region, including on heavily populated areas, that made BP’s leaked Macondo Prospect oil 52 times more toxic.

What else is mixed with Nalco’s “Crude MCHM” that leaked out of a tank is yet to be admitted or proven through independent tests. Neither Nalco nor the military are fessing up to the West Virginia toxic stew, just as they stayed tight-lipped throughout the Gulf catastrophe.

Two weeks ago today, on or before Jan. 9, chemicals, including Nalco’s “Crude MCHM,” plus, we’re now told, PPh, and other yet to be identified chemicals, entered the water supply of nine counties in southern West Virginia.  Chemicals oozed from an above-ground, single-walled tank propped on a single concrete block and escaped through an old, cracked containment wall. 

The pitiful tank was owned by a Koch Industries’ distributor, Freedom Industries. The poisons leaked into the Elk River, that supplies West Virginia American Water Co, another private corporation, that bought the water company from the public as part of the wave of privatization ruining the nation’s public infrastructure and services.

“Before that sell-out, when the people were in control of their water, there were no such problems,” Green Party affiliate Mountain Party leader Jesse Johnson told Dupré this week. [Read: EXCLUSIVE: ‘Worse Than Feared’ Poison In WV Leak Identified By Independent Scientist, Radiation Concern]

On Jan. 9, federal and state governments declared state of emergencies and the state government issued a water ban advisory for the entire 9-county impacted area, 300000 people. [Read: W.V. Under Chemical Attack! State of Emergency: 9-County Water Ban]

The corporate-owned government’s responded to the disaster as though it was a terrorist attack. It seemingly, needed to protect its interests, not the public’s. The military immediately moved into the area with Weapons of Mass Destruction civil response teams. FEMA moved in with bottled water. The public, however, was not even advised of standard procedures when a chemical impacts communities. [Read what the National Terror Alert Information Center advises citizens to do: Nat’l Terror Alert: What To Do In West Va. Chemical Attack] 

At least 317 West Virginians in the disaster zone were treated for poisoning at 10 different hospitals. That’s the number officials report. Some doctors, however, refused to treat patients for chemical exposure, medically mistreating them according to some reports.  [Read: Baby Burns In W. Va. Poison Crisis]

Officials began lifting “Do not use” orders in some counties on Jan. 13, only four days after the reported disaster and people were still smelling the strong chemical.

Officials lifted the ban in all counties by Jan. 18, declaring the water safe, and telling residents to flush home water systems before using them. Hospital admissions doubled.

As many as 411 more patients were treated for poisoning in emergency rooms alone, according to the Charleston Gazette. The number of people describing chemical poisoning – burns, rashes, neurological disorders and others who’ve not been to the hospital or doctor clinics is unknown. Judging, however, from Facebook, personal emails to this author, and this author’s interviews this week, the true number of people poisoned would range in the thousands.

Another clue about actual numbers of poison victims is West Virginia’s Poison Control Center. It’s number of callers from the impacted zone had risen to over 2,323 Saturday, according to Dr. Scharman.

“Since the 19th, another 100 people have called in reports to the Poisons Control Center, people experiencing skin rashes and nausea,” Dr. Scharman said Thursday.

The official response to the growing number of people presenting poisoning symptoms and asking for help? Basically, they say it’s a problem of victims’ poor hygiene and mental health issues.

Dirty Energy Money Makes West Virginia’s World Go Around

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito have received campaign donations from people connected to Freedom Industries, as the Gazette reported. 

Tomblin received $1,500 from Farrell and Forrest during his 2011 and 2012 campaigns for governor, according to filings with the West Virginia Secretary of State.  

The fossil fuel industry has paid Tomblin $628,393 to make sure he leads the state for them.

But that’s peanuts compared to Capito’s loot straight from the Koch boys alone: $32,000. 

In total, Capito has received a whopping $1,245, 931 from fossil fuel industries. Over 150 fossil fuel companies have made sure she was elected to represent their interests over the interest of the 99%.

The 1% is doing well in Wild Wonderful West Virginia.

it seems obvious why West Virginia, Louisiana, and federal officials all have promoted the same lies about hygiene and mental illness in two separate disasters – in the Gulf and Appalachia.

In each case those lies were provided by the same people who poisoned us in the first place: the fossil fuel industries.