In early January 2014, a chemical leak on the Elk River that fouled the water supply for 300,000 West Virginians, state officials said they’re now focused on long-term remediation efforts at the leak site, a tank farm for Freedom Industries in Charleston. An estimated 7,500 gallons of a chemical mixture, a combination of crude MCHM and stripped PPH, leaked into the Elk River on Jan. 9 and traveled downstream to the water intake for the Kanawha Valley Water Treatment Plant. Many people described the smell of a licorice-like odor – from the 4-methylcyclohexane methanol – in the sink, in the shower, in the air, especially in neighborhoods close to the Elk River. President Obama promptly issued an emergency declaration in the hours after the spill, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency dispatched tanker trucks full of clean water.
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