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CHARLESTON – A law revising West Virginia’s regulation of above-ground storage tanks was signed into law Friday by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin.
The bill has drawn both praise and criticism for changing some protections created last year in the wake of a chemical spill that fouled drinking water for hundreds of thousands of West Virginians in the Kanawha County area.
“The changes in this bill represent reasonable steps to ensure protection of our drinking water resources by focusing on the tanks that pose the most risk,” Tomblin said. “Inspections will focus on the tanks closest to water supplies and those containing the most hazardous chemicals.”
In January 2014, a tank owned by Freedom Industries leaked thousands of gallons of the chemical MCHM, which is used to clean coal, into the Elk River, fouling the water supply for more than 300,000 residents.
The Legislature responded by passing a law requiring inspections and reporting on above-ground storage tanks throughout the state.
The net cast by that law snared more than 50,000 tanks, many of which did not contain dangerous chemicals and were owned by small businesses or the oil and natural gas industry.
Business leaders said the inspection requirements often duplicated other state and federal requirements and were expensive and burdensome.
Some businesses warned they would be forced to close due to the requirements.
The bill relaxes some of those requirements, exempting tanks that contain water, brine or other liquids which would not pose a public health risk. It also focuses the strictest requirements on tanks within “zones of critical concern,” which are near drinking water sources. The law governs about 12,000 tanks.
Critics of the bill say it amounts to a rollback of water safety regulations passed in the aftermath of the Freedom Industries spill and does not adequately protect drinking water sources.