Schools, Courts Closed after Chemical Spill
COSTELLO: There is a major environmental emergency in West Virginia this morning. Nearly 200,000 people across nine counties are affected. They're trying to find clean water after a leak at a chemical storage facility into the Elk River. Now the governor has warned people not to drink or use tap water in any form. The Health Department says ingesting the chemical could lead to difficulty breathing, severe vomiting or even sores on your skin. Schools and courts are shut down this morning as officials work to figure out just how much of the water supply has been affected. And just moments ago, officials updated us on the progress of the investigation.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a tank farm. It was a release of material from a tank farm. We know it casually as a foaming agent. You have to ask the equipment or the chemical manufacturer of that, the detailed particulars of the information. But we've looked at it and it doesn't have what we would consider a high lethality. We were notified of an event from the DEP just before noon yesterday. The event, we believe, had started before that time but we were not aware.</s>COSTELLO: All right. The chemical he is talking about is a form of methanol. It's used to clean coal and as I said it seeped into the Elk River and then made its way to the water treatment facility. Joining me now to talk more about this is Cabell County administrator, Chris Tatum. Good morning Mr. Tatum.</s>CHRIS TATUM, CABELL COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR: Good morning Carol. How are you?</s>COSTELLO: I'm much better than you, I know that. How is your community affected?</s>TATUM: Well, it is a little crazy right now as you can imagine but our county here in Cabell County is one of the smaller places affected by what is going on. We have about 10,000 or 12,000 that are affected by this. We have mobilized water. We have drinking water going to our outlying agencies, volunteer fire departments and we are setting up water stations across that end of the county to make sure that our citizens are taken care of.</s>COSTELLO: Because Am I right about this? You not only cannot drink the water but you can't bathe in the water or use the water to wash your clothes either?</s>TATUS: Yes, they -- it is a strict "do not use" situation. And they have advised us and advised our systems not to use the water in any form or fashion. So we have been passing that along and keeping our citizens informed as we can. We have emergency services, sheriff's department and 911 operations all fully staffed and ready to take calls and answer questions and get people to the right places so that they can get water in the instance that they do need it. Again, we are in a smaller area that is not as affected as some of the larger counties but we have mobilized supplies to get things to people that need them.</s>COSTELLO: And I know that some people are asking neighbors whose water is safe which is probably pretty far away from where you to fill bottles with water and bring them into communities affected.</s>TATUM: Correct. You know there is a large community effort to do that. A lot of our local grocery stores and outlets are chain stores were without water last night. And because we are in such close proximity in a way that the water supply runs, people on one end of the county are able to help out the other end of the county. So we have asked for that neighborly assistance. If you can do that and then, of course, we're a tight knit community anyway so we have all kinds of people out trying to make sure that people get what they need and get it where they can.</s>COSTELLO: Well, we wish you lots of luck. Chris Tatum -- thank you so much for being with me.</s>TATUM: Thank you, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: You're welcome. We'll be right back.