One year ago a chemical spill into West Virginia’s Elk River shut down the Charleston area water system for weeks. Scientists are still studying what happened in one of the largest municipal water emergencies in the country… as legal action on the case gets underway.
On the day of the chemical spill, the first clue Charleston area residents had that there was a problem with their water was the smell. They reported the water smelled something like licorice.
“One of the things with the licorice smell is that you determine what a smell is based upon what you’ve been exposed to. So that was the closest thing that everyone could think of,” says Melanie Kiechel, an Assistant Professor at Virginia. She is working on a book called Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Urban America. She says sometimes smell can be a lifesaver.
“Because your water shouldn’t smell like licorice that’s not how the water normally smells and that was how they were able to identify there was something wrong with the water. Something must have happened.”
Even after water from the Elk River was deemed safe to drink, residents continued to report the smell of licorice. Scientists from Virginia Tech analyzed what they call the smell threshold of the chemical, which is used to clean coal ash, and found it persists at extremely low levels. ---more than a hundred times lower than recommended by the Centers for Disease Control.
EPA inspections have identified some water tanks that are still unsafe to use. The inspections were to have been completed by the New Year but remain behind schedule. Six former officials from Freedom Industries, the company, which spilled the chemical known as MHCM into the Elk River last January, have been charged in the case.
