Most speakers during a public hearing in the WV House of Delegates Friday morning for a bill that would bar community air monitoring data in 3rd-party lawsuits voiced opposition to the legislation.
The West Virginia Legislature is showing little sign through a quarter of the 2023 state regular legislative session of strengthening air quality and other environmental protections in a state of high concentrations of air pollution from chemical, gas and oil infrastructure. Instead, a bill introduced by House Energy and Manufacturing Committee Chair Bill Anderson, R-Wood, would keep the state Department of Environmental Protection from using community air monitoring data for regulatory purposes.
Nichole Westfall, a mural artist, provided a mural that attendees helped paint that read “In Each Drop a Dream: All Our Mountain Streams Run Clean” — an ideal well over 300 people rallied behind at the event led by the West Virginia Rivers Coalition to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the chemical leak.
Tuesday event planned in Charleston to mark 10 years since 2014 water crisis wvmetronews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wvmetronews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A decade later, environmental health advocates fear that with the licorice-like stench from the spilled chemicals at Freedom Industries that contaminated drinking water for 300,000 in West Virginia no longer piercing nostrils throughout the Kanawha Valley, water protection could slip further through the cracks.