Just a few miles down route 3 from massive piles of coal at the Elk Run Coal Co. processing plant, an old Post Office branch serves as the West Virginia Clean Water Hub’s main office and dispatch center in Whitesville. The Hub has been distributing water to people in seven counties since the first days of the spill, after setting up a Facebook page and putting the call out through InterOccupy for volunteers and donations of water and funds - all of which have been flowing in from across West Virginia and surrounding states. Their office is humming with activity nearly 24 hours a day.
Just a few miles down route 3 from massive piles of coal at the Elk Run Coal Co. processing plant, an old Post Office branch serves as the West Virginia Clean Water Hub’s main office and dispatch center in Whitesville. The Hub has been distributing water to people in seven counties since the first days of the spill, after setting up a Facebook page and putting the call out through InterOccupy for volunteers and donations of water and funds - all of which have been flowing in from across West Virginia and surrounding states. Their office is humming with activity nearly 24 hours a day. In this small building on the main drag through town, volunteers field calls from residents needing water, schedule deliveries, coordinate volunteers in the field, eat, sleep and store hundreds of cases of clean water. The group has point people throughout the affected region who coordinate weekly water drops for communities and door-to-door deliveries for those who are elderly, sick or disabled and cannot get out to pick up bottled water. The Hub was formed after various environmental action groups, like Aurora Lights, Coal River Mountain Watch, Keeper of the Mountains Foundation, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and RAMPS came together immediately after the spill, when they saw what they felt was an inadequate response from the state in getting residents clean, safe water.
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Photo credit: © James Fassinger / Alamy / Afripics
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Keywords: 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol, chemical, clean, coal, crisis, delivery, elk, hub, industry, loading, mchm, poison, river, safe, spill, toxic, virginia, water, west
