OOPS! Sorry, You're Water's Not Safe To Drink After All

North Carolina officials said water from the Dan River was safe to drink.

This sounds familiar. A toxic is spilled in a river; residents are warned about drinking the water; later officials declare that the water is safe to drink; then, big surprise, the water is found to still be poisonous.

            This scenario played itself out in southern West Virginia this past month, where a chemical spill poisoned the drinking water for 300,000 residents. The water was declared unsafe, then safe, then unsafe again. Now the very same story is playing itself out in North Carolina, where a leak spilled between 50,000 and 82,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River last week. Coal ash contains arsenic, lead, mercury, and selenium, all of which are toxic. Officials in North Carolina declared the water safe to drink on the third of this month, the day on which the coal ash spill had initially occurred. The officials now confess that the water was still toxic when they had declared it safe for drinking, saying that their erroneous nihil obstat for the water was due to “an honest mistake.”

            Well, well, well, “an honest mistake.” When they say this, do they think that it makes it OK? “Sorry, folks. We made a little goof about your drinking water. Hope it’s no biggie.” Is that what they are saying? From this LA Times story, it doesn’t seem like anybody is particularly contrite. It doesn’t seem like anybody’s job is on the line for his or her “honest mistake.”

            I guess I’ll side with Senator Jay Rockefeller, who admits that after working with the coal companies for decades, he doesn’t trust them in the slightest. Officials in West Virginia say the water is safe, but Rockefeller says that he’s not drinking it.