The
January 9 chemical leak on the Elk River in Charleston
“The
number very much surprised me,” said Kanawha County Commissioner Dave Hardy.
“That number includes a lot of oil and gas wells and that skewed the number
substantially, but still there are a lot of facilities in Kanawha County
Officials
used the Tier 2 reports, which are required by the state at most chemical
storage facilities, to identify the storage sites. However, Deputy County
Emergency Manager C.W. Sigman, said those reports don’t cover every potential
threat.
“We’re
not going to be satisfied with those numbers. We’re going to go out and do some
windshield views,” he said. “A lot of places are under that threshold limit,
but still pose a threat. They don’t have enough chemicals requiring them to
fill out the paperwork and pay a fee, but if you have a thousand gallons of
pesticide on a farm we want to know about it.”
All
of the locations have been identified and plotted on an electronic map at the
Metro 911 Center. The program enables an emergency official to pinpoint a
location, click on the site, and have instant information on what chemicals are
stored there and in what amounts.
“This
is going to be a very valuable tool for us to use in the future if we have
another situation if we have a report of a chemical leak,” said Hardy.
“It’s
easier to have that visual representation instead of wondering what’s close
by,” Sigman added. “If you look at that map you can more quickly identify where
the problem is.”
Sigman
said they’ll also be able to identify which fire company is responsible for any
emergencies at the site and to develop a protocol now for how to properly
notify the public if there’s a problem at that particular site.
