By Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette-Mail
Charleston, W.Va. — The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board writes final reports, not epilogues.
It’s the board’s job to investigate industrial chemical incidents and issue safety recommendations based on the root causes it finds.
The lesson the board spelled out in its final report on a 2014 Elk River chemical spill that polluted the drinking water of 300,000 people was clear.
Don’t let another Tank 396 slip by.
The report mentioned Tank 396 more than 100 times across 134 pages because it was the aboveground storage tank from which nearly 11,000 gallons of a mixture of a coal-cleaning solvent and polyglycol ethers escaped through two small holes on the tank floor and rolled into the adjacent Elk River. The mixture flowed downstream to the intake of a West Virginia American Water treatment facility a mile-and-a-half downriver from Tank 396 at the Freedom Industries chemical storage and distribution facility in Charleston…
