Freedom executive had felonies, benefited from stimulus

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Freedom Industries, the company responsible for contaminating the water of 300,000 Kanawha Valley residents, was founded by a two-time convicted felon, benefited from the 2009 federal stimulus and at least two of its executives have longstanding ties to the Charleston business community.

Since the chemical spill on Thursday, Freedom Industries executives have entirely avoided media requests, except for a brief news conference Friday night.

On Sunday morning, Charles Ryan Associates, a prominent Charleston public relations firm hired by Freedom, abruptly dropped the chemical distributor as a client.

"I made the decision not to represent them," said Susan Lavenski, who was handling Freedom for Charles Ryan. She would not give any details as to why she would not longer represent the company.

Freedom Industries was founded in 1992 by Gary Southern and Carl Lemley Kennedy II, according to filings with the West Virginia secretary of state. The company's website, however, says it was founded in 1986.

"Our friends and our neighbors, this incident is extremely unfortunate, unanticipated and we are very, very sorry for the disruption to everybody's daily life that this incident has caused," Southern, the company's president, said at the news conference Friday night. "It has been an extremely long day, I'm having trouble talking at the moment. I would appreciate it if we could wrap this thing up."

He has not spoken publicly since.

Kennedy is still listed as "incorporator" with the secretary of state, but a woman who answered the phone at Freedom Industries on Friday said he left the company "years ago."

As recently as 2005, Kennedy owned 5 percent of Freedom Industries, according to a bankruptcy filing. That stake was valued at $675,000, according to Kennedy's filing, meaning that in 2005 Freedom Industries was valued at $13.5 million.

That valuation has almost certainly increased over the past eight years. In 2008, the company employed 45 people, sold 10 million gallons of material and earned $26 million, according to newspaper records.

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Freedom executive had felonies, benefited from stimulus

Freedom Industries: Meet The Chemical Provider At The Center Of The West Virginia Chemical Spill

On its website, Freedom Industries says it was founded in 1986 and has two production facilities. The Etowah River Terminal, where the leak occurred, can store 4 million gallons worth of chemicals. According to WOWKTV, Freedom bought the property in December.

The website says it is a full service producer of specialty chemicals for the mining, steel, and cement industries [and] a leading producer of freeze conditioning agents, dust control palliatives, flotation reagents, water treatment polymers and other specialty chemicals.The leaked chemical, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM), is used in a coal cleaning process.

Kanwaha County Commission President Kent Carper saidyesterdaythat a containment wall meant to prevent chemicals from reaching soil at Freedom Industries was in need of $1 million in repairs, but was never fixed.

Carper said county officials have requested the U.S. Chemical Safety Board and Environmental Protection Agency investigate the spill.

According to NBC, who spoke to the state Department of Environmental Protection, Freedom Industries is exempt from DEP inspection because it only stores chemicals and does not produce them, despite the Freedom Industries' claiming on its website that it is producer. Whether the Etowah River Terminal facility does produce chemicals or is only a storage facility is unclear.

The West Virginia Gazette reports that the spill was discovered by Department of Environmental Protection air-quality officials after they received complaints of an odor around the facility. Freedom Industries did not report the spill to regulatory agencies, but company president Gary Southern said it was unaware of the leak by 10:30 a.m. on Jan 9.

The DEP has ordered Freedom Industries to move its coal processing chemicals to a safer site. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin has responded by saying he will work on tightening regulation on chemical storage facilities.

Many residents are frustrated with both Freedom Industries and West Virginia American Water, who owns the treatment plant where the MCHM made its way into the water supply. On Friday, one angry resident threatened that he was on his way to teach everyone [at Freedom Industries] a lesson.

The spill reportedly originated from a 35,000-gallon storage tank along the Elk River. From there, MCHM made its way through the soil and into the river. The chemicals then rode the river down to the West Virginia American Water-owned Kanawha Valley Water Treatment Plant, where the chemicals saturated a special filter system and flowed into the water supply.

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Freedom Industries: Meet The Chemical Provider At The Center Of The West Virginia Chemical Spill

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Freedom Outpost | Don’t Tread on Us

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Freedom Outpost | Don't Tread on Us

Freedom Industries execs are longtime colleagues

Freedom Industries, the company whose chemical spill is responsible for the contamination of much of the Kanawha Valley's water, has existed in its current form for less than two weeks.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Freedom Industries, the company whose chemical spill is responsible for the contamination of much of the Kanawha Valley's water, has existed in its current form for less than two weeks.

On the last day of 2013, Freedom Industries, which distributes chemicals used in coal mining, merged with three other companies: Etowah River Terminal, Poca Blending and Crete Technologies, a Delaware company.

Poca Blending, in Nitro, and Etowah River Terminal, in Charleston, now comprise the two branches of Freedom Industries.

The company's website says the Charleston branch, which spilled the chemical, "can process large volumes of chemical rapidly, and cost effectively."

Smells from the spill were reported early Thursday morning, but Freedom mostly stonewalled media inquiries -- releasing only a bland news release through a public relations firm -- until a 10-minute news conference Friday evening.

At the news conference, Freedom Industries President Gary Southern gave few details about the company, made several statements seemingly in conflict with what government officials have said, and was whisked away by a public relations handler with reporters still shouting questions.

Prior to the news conference, the most extensive public statement from anyone connected with the company came Friday afternoon from Kathy Stover-Kennedy, the girlfriend of Freedom Industries executive Dennis P. Farrell.

Stover-Kennedy stressed that the spill was an accident and said that Farrell has received threatening and frightening messages from people around the world.

"I'm not asking for anyone's sympathy but a little empathy wouldn't hurt. And just so you know, the boys at the plant made and drank coffee this morning! I showered and brushed my teeth this morning and I am just fine!" Stover-Kennedy wrote on her personal Facebook page.

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Freedom Industries execs are longtime colleagues

Freedom Industries Releases Statement after Chemical Leak

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- The company at the center of a chemical leak, which led to a state of emergency for several West Virginia counties has released a statement.

Early Friday afternoon, Gary Southern, President of Freedom Industries released the following statement: Since the discovery of the leak, safety for residents in Kanawha and surrounding counties has been Freedom Industries first priority. We have been working with local and federal regulatory, safety and environmental entities, including the DEP, Coast Guard, Army Corp of Engineers and Homeland Security, and are following all necessary steps to fix the issue. Our team has been working around the clock since the discovery to contain the leak to prevent further contamination. At this point, Freedom Industries is still working to determine the amountof 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol, or Crude MCHM, a chemical used in processing coal, that has been released, as the first priority was safety, containment and cleanup.

Freedom Industries is in the process of setting up an Incident Command Center on site. As more factual information is made available, we will keep you updated.

At this time, officials say there is no timeline for when the water ban, put in place for residents in parts of nine counties, will be lifted.

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Freedom Industries Releases Statement after Chemical Leak

FREEDOM INDUSTRIES BREAKS SILENCE: Doesn’t know how leak happened

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Claude Burns, owner of Burns Chevrolet in Rock Hill, S.C., donated three trucks of bottled water to be distributed to West Virginians through Joe Holland Chevrolet in South Charleston on Jan. 11.

A South Carolina Chevrolet dealer reached out to Joe Holland Chevrolet in South Charleston to donate water Jan. 11.

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FREEDOM INDUSTRIES BREAKS SILENCE: Doesn’t know how leak happened

Freedom Industries cited for Elk chemical spill

This is the Freedom Industries plant along the Elk River, just north of Charleston, where the "Crude MCHM" leak occurred Thursday.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- When West Virginia inspectors arrived at Freedom Industries late Thursday morning, they discovered that the company had taken "no spill containment measures" to combat the chemical spill that has put drinking water supplies off-limits for hundreds of thousands of residents.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- When West Virginia inspectors arrived at Freedom Industries late Thursday morning, they discovered that the company had taken "no spill containment measures" to combat the chemical spill that has put drinking water supplies off-limits for hundreds of thousands of residents.

The state Department of Environmental Protection said Freedom Industries violated the West Virginia's Air Pollution Control Act and the Water Pollution Control Act by allowing the chemical "Crude MCHM," consisting mostly of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, to escape from its facility, just upstream from West Virginia American Water's regional intake in the Elk River.

DEP officials have said between 2,000 gallons and 5,000 gallons of the material leaked from a hole in a storage tank. A concrete-block dike, meant to serve as secondary containment, also leaked, allowing an undetermined amount of the chemical into the Elk.

"It's a bad situation," said Mike Dorsey, chief of the DEP's homeland security and emergency response division.

Dorsey said the tank contained about 30,000 gallons of material at the time of the leak, and that the company had pumped the rest of the material out and shipped it to another of its operations.

Dorsey has said DEP officials began an investigation after receiving odor complaints from nearby residents starting at about 8:15 a.m. The DEP and Kanawha County emergency officials traced the odors to Freedom Industries, which had not self-reported any sort of leak or accident, officials said.

In an air-quality enforcement order, the DEP said air-quality officials who arrived at the site at 11:10 a.m. "discovered that no spill containment measures had been initiated and that an accumulating MCHM leak pool was seeping thru a dike wall adjacent to the Elk River and a downstream oil sheen was observed."

DEP Secretary Randy Huffman said more information needs to be gathered, but that it seems possible the spill into the river might not have been as bad if Freedom Industries had acted more quickly.

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Freedom Industries cited for Elk chemical spill

Freedom Industries issues statement on spill

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CHARLESTON (WVVA) - Freedom Industries has issued its first statement on the chemical spill the occurred at its plant along the Elk River near Charleston. Below is the full statement:

"Since the discovery of the leak, safety for residents in Kanawha and surrounding counties has been Freedom Industries' first priority. We have been working with local and federal regulatory, safety and environmental entities, including the DEP, Coast Guard, Army Corp of Engineers and Homeland Security, and are following all necessary steps to fix the issue. Our team has been working around the clock since the discovery to contain the leak to prevent further contamination. At this point, Freedom Industries is still working to determine the amount of 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol, or Crude MCHM, a chemical used in processing coal, that has been released, as the first priority was safety, containment and cleanup.

Freedom Industries is in the process of setting up an Incident Command Center on site. As more factual information is made available, we will keep you updated."

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Freedom Industries issues statement on spill

Hun Sen’s Police Violence againts Peaceful Demonstrators in Freedom Park – Video


Hun Sen #39;s Police Violence againts Peaceful Demonstrators in Freedom Park
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Hun Sen's Police Violence againts Peaceful Demonstrators in Freedom Park - Video