Do We Trust the Water? And Frank Words From Senator Jay Rockefeller

It seems that there is more confusion than anything else when it comes to the toxic spills in Appalachia. A month after the Freedom Industries spilled a large amount of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, a chemical that is used to “clean” coal before shipping, into the Elk River in Charleston, West Virginia, poisoning the drinking water for 300,000 residents, the word from the Center For Disease Control was that the water is now safe to drink. Yet some schools are still closed. Two schools were closed Wednesday and Thursday due to the persistence of a licorice smell coming from the schools’ water supply. One student went to the hospital after complaining of burning eyes, and a teacher was taken to the hospital after the teacher fainted.

            It’s kind of the same story in North Carolina. An international group of water advocates testing the water of the Dan River, which received between 50,000 and 82,000 tons of coal ash residue from a retired Duke Energy power plant, said the river showed, “extremely high levels of arsenic, chromium, iron, lead and other toxic metals typically found in coal ash,” while Duke Energy claims that tests by the company and North Carolina officials indicated no adverse effect on the water supply from the river.

            I guest I know whom I would trust in this case.

            I don’t quite know what to think of this story from Politico about Jay Rockefeller, who served as West Virginia’s governor from 1977 through 1985 and has served as the Mountain State’s senator for the past 20 years (now retiring).

Frank words from Senator Rockefeller: Now that he's retiring, can he voice what he really thinks? photo AP

At a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s water subcommittee Rockefeller had some unexpectedly frank words concerning the spill in the Elk River and Appalachia in general. He lamented the characteristic fatalism that runs through the deepest parts of the Appalachian Mountains that perversely has people delighting in the hardships foisted on them by outside business interests. And he paired this fatalism with what he called an “Appalachian myth,” which is “the idea that somehow God has it in his plan to make sure that industry is going to make life safe for them.”

            These words seem contradictory fatalism paired with a sense of blessedness, that the Good Lord somehow considered the folks of Appalachia special and His providence will work things out for these hardworking yet unlucky people. Having spent his entire adult life representing West Virginia, Rockefeller will tell you that these seemingly contradictory traits are two sides of the same twisted psychological coin that he rightly identifies with the remnants of the Scotch-Irish who had been the original white settlers throughout West Virginia.”

            Rockefeller again hits the nail on the head when he goes on to say that this mythology, that “somehow God has it in his plan to make sure that industry is going to make life safe for them,” is not true. He goes on to say:

Industry does everything they can and gets away with it almost all the time, whether it’s the coal industry, not the subject of this hearing, or water or whatever. They will cut corners, and they will get away with it. The world is as it is; we accept the world as it is. And the point is you don’t accept the world as it is, but as it should be, and you make it in that posture. I’m just—I’m here angry, upset, shocked, embarrassed that this would happen to 300,000 absolutely wonderful people, who, you know, work in coal mines and that stuff, but they’re depending on the fruit of the land, wherever it may be, for survival. They’re making it, but barely.

The fatalism of West Virginia, and indeed much of Appalachia, spread through the hillsides and hollers of that region long before Jay Rockefeller entered that state as a Vista volunteer in the 1960s. As senator, as governor, he has been powerless to change that. And yet, it is still disheartening to hear Rockefeller confess that his many years representing my home state have not been years of good stewardship and he was unable to ameliorate the lives of his constituents despite their fatalistic view of their world.