Freedom tanks not unregulated, as Tomblin said

This photo shows the boom deployed to control the Crude MCHM chemical leak from the Freedom Industries tank farm into the Elk River. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency photo)

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Last Monday, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin stood behind a podium in the West Virginia Capitol and announced his plan for a new program to prevent chemical spills from what he called "unregulated" above-ground storage tanks.

Tomblin said his proposal would give the state Department of Environmental Protection "the tools necessary" to prevent another chemical leak like the one from the Freedom Industries tank farm, which contaminated the Elk River and the drinking water supply for 300,000 West Virginians.

"It was not regulated, and this bill will address that," the governor said later to a small group of reporters.

When asked how he could call the Freedom Industries tank farm -- which held a water-pollution permit approved by the DEP -- "unregulated," the governor had agency Secretary Randy Huffman explain. Huffman carefully clarified what the governor had said.

"Unregulated is probably not the right word," Huffman said. "It was under-regulated."

Policymakers are beginning to respond to the leak of the chemical Crude MCHM into the Elk River, just upstream from the West Virginia American Water regional intake.

Some confusion continues, though, about exactly what authority the DEP had over the facility. A front-page New York Times story, for example, paraphrased Huffman as saying that, "because the facility stored chemicals, but did not produce them, his department had no responsibility for regulating it."

However, in several interviews with the Sunday Gazette-Mail, Huffman and other DEP officials have made it clear -- as Huffman did in his appearance with the governor -- that Freedom Industries was absolutely not unregulated.

"I don't think of them as being unregulated, but as being under-regulated," Huffman said in one discussion.

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Freedom tanks not unregulated, as Tomblin said