US officials knew about WV chemicals

State officials and the company that owns the tank that has leaked thousands of gallons of hazardous chemicals into the drinking water of 300,000 West Virginians should have known that there was the potential for an incident.
According to Huffington Post, the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. reports that Freedom Industries, the company that owns the leaking tanks, told state officials nearly a year ago that it was keeping thousands of pounds of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol in the company’s storage facility about a mile and a half up the Elk River from where West Virginia American Water draws supplies for thousands in the Charleston area.
The chemical is used to wash coal after it is mined from the ground. The disclosure was included in paperwork that Freedom Industries had filed under the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, a 1986 law that is meant ensure that the public and first responders are adequately informed in the case of an accident, and that there is a plan to deal with it, such as alerts and evacuations.