In January 2014, 300,000 West Virginians lined up for bottled water after 10,000 gallons of chemicals had leaked into the Elk River, just upstream from their drinking water intake. The chemicals had leaked from a storage facility and people were in fear over the long-term health risks of drinking the polluted water.
Freedom Industries, the company that owned the facility, was accused of poor maintenance of the rusty tanks that resulted in the coal-cleaning chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM) seeping into the river; they filed for bankruptcy within mere days of the spill.
Eventually, 6 company employees were indicted for violating the federal Clean Water Act and putting an entire population needlessly at risk. In 2015, Gary Southern, the company’s top executive, pleaded guilty to environmental violations.
Fast-forward to 17 February 2016, and a federal judge hands down Southern’s sentence: a $20,000 fine and a mere 30-day prison sentence. Judge Thomas Johnston of the U.S. District Court in Charleston said, upon handing down the sentence, that he believed that it was an issue of negligence, not of criminal action on Southern’s part. Southern will get credit for time served for the night he spent in a Florida jail after his arrest in December 2014.
“This event, now two years past, clearly had a disruptive effect on people’s lives and, perhaps worst yet, on their trust and safety of the water coming from their pipes,” said Johnston. “But the crisis passed. We have no reason to believe that problems related to the water crisis linger in our taps, and I have no evidence — no evidence before me — that MCHM, while perhaps an immediate irritant, represents a long-term health threat to anyone.“
“The defendant is hardly a criminal,” Johnston continued. “He has no criminal history and has been a businessman most of his life. His crimes are those of careless omission.”
[Source: Huffington Post]
Many individuals, including most West Virginians, feel that this is a totally inadequate punishment.
“This was not a victimless crime, but the laws were not written to protect the victims,” said Maya Nye, who served as spokesperson for West Virginia-based People Concerned About Chemical Safety at the time of the spill.
“That shows you the difference between when poor communities or communities of color are affected and when communities with more wealth and more political clout are affected,” Nye added.
I tend to agree with the residents of West Virginia; individuals and companies who pollute the drinking water should receive far stiffer sentences as a warning to others to take the protection of drinking water more seriously and abide by rules and regulations instituted to do so.
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