Will we learn?

This op-ed of mine about the need for the state legislature to protect WV's water appeared in the Friday Charleston Gazette:

I was traveling out of state last January when I got an email from a friend at the Council of Churches about a chemical spill in Charleston.

At first, I didn’t think much of it or have any idea of how huge that event would turn out to be.

After all, things like that happen fairly regularly in West Virginia. A sludge leak here, a shelter in place there, a tank, a truck, a train … we kind of get used to it.

Shame on us for that.

I remember a line from Dostoevsky that goes something like “Man gets used to anything, the scoundrel.”

If there was any silver lining in last year’s Freedom Industries spill, it was in the fact that this time the effects of a disaster weren’t confined to rural people up a holler in southern West Virginia. The spill inconvenienced some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the state. Legislators of both parties had to look at signs in the Capitol warning that water was to be used only for flushing toilets.

Adversity, like wealth, is something distributed very unequally, although it tends to be concentrated on the other end of the spectrum.

That experience of shared adversity, all too rare, gave a sense of urgency last year as legislators labored throughout the session to come up with a workable bill that had pretty much universal support.

Now, it looks like the lessons of that shared adversity are in danger of being forgotten. Several bills have been proposed that would weaken protections on our drinking water.

One argument in favor of that is that the Freedom Industries spill was an outlier far beyond the norm. That’s true as far as it goes. But then the recent oil train wreck, Upper Big Branch, Buffalo Creek, Farmington, and Hawks Nest disasters were outliers too.

Come to think of it, West Virginia itself is a bit of an outlier. In the language of statistics, I think you could make the case that we’re a standard deviation or two away from the arithmetic mean.

For that matter, things like severe winter storms and structure fires are outliers of a sort. Fortunately, they don’t happen very often, but we still need snowplows and fire departments.

We hear a lot these days about improving West Virginia’s economy so that it’s easier for families to stay here and thrive. But I know of several young families that have moved out of state or are planning to because of the spill. I know plenty more who have said one more thing like that and they’re out of here. The people I’m thinking about are young, educated, smart and productive, i.e. exactly the kind of people we need more of.

We also hear a lot about making West Virginia more business friendly. However, it would be very hard to calculate the harm done to hundreds of local businesses by the chemical spill. Thousands of workers, particularly those in the service sector, lost work and wages. And these are people who don’t put their money in an overseas hedge fund: they spent all they get right here. Along with that, thousands of school children missed classroom instruction and many of these missed the only nutritious meals they were likely to get those days.

West Virginia’s tourism industry, which generated well over $4 billion in 2010, took a hit as well. Further, incidents like that, not to mention the latest mishap, make the state less attractive to new business investments, particularly those that don’t involve trashing the place.

While any piece of legislation or policy can be improved, any changes to state water laws should not come at the expense of public safety or water quality.

There are many thoughtful people who believe that water will be to the coming century as precious as oil was in the past. And water is something our state is blessed with. It would be nice to think that we’ve learned something from last year’s mess and over 100 years of the exploitation of our natural resources and people.

The jury is still out on that.

Alternative mottos

The state motto of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia is "Mountaineers are always free." I really like that one, although perhaps it was adopted before some residents of my state became as habituated to groveling at the feet of corporations as they are today.

If we had to bring that motto up, or, more accurately, down to date, I'm not sure what it would be. My first choice would be this:

West Virginia: you can't make this **** up.

Other possibilities include:

West Virginia: Open for Poison

or

West Virginia: Safe to Flush.

Any suggestions?

p.s. I'd totally love to be proven wrong about this by subsequent events.

Three streams (no water pun intended)

The water crisis brought on by Freedom Industries' chemical leak provides a good real life illustration of what I think is a useful tool from political science. It's from John Kingdon's Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies.

Theory is important, by the way. No one serious about affecting social change should ignore it. Or worse, substitute it with bad or just tired rhetoric. And the main reason to develop good theories in this context is to be able to apply them in real situations.

In Kingdon's model, policy changes happen when policy windows open. Policy windows open when three streams come together: the problem stream, the policy stream and the political stream. Specifically, those interested in enacting a policy need to be able to "couple" it to something that is widely seen to be a problem when political conditions are favorable. When the streams don't come together, it's hard to get anything major done.

The chemical leak made plenty of people see the need for clean water to be a problem. It's an open question as to whether it will be possible to muster the political will to enact strong enough policies to protect it.

There are lots of roles to be played in this arena. One is the wonkish role of developing policies and trying to pitch them to the political stream and link them to problems people want to act on. Another is to muster pressure to move the political stream in the right direction. Still another is raising public awareness that this or that is a problem that can really be addressed.

One thing is for sure in the water crisis: we've got the problem stream covered. We'll see in the next few weeks how or if the others come together. I hope they do. Its a safe bet though that the toughest stream will be the political one.

I think we have consensus...

Based on the testimony of around 50 eloquent speakers at a public hearing on the West Virginia chemical spill, I think it's pretty safe to say that the people affected are not amused. Further, the people are expecting the legislature to step up and pass some strong regulations to ensure it won't happen again. You can watch the testimony here.

WORTH A LOOK. Here's an op-ed by the president of the WV Council of Churches opposing proposed cuts to programs for vulnerable families in the state budget.

A CALL TO ACTION.Two friends of mine lay it out here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Get ready for some political theater

I learned yesterday that the WV legislature is having a public hearing on our water crisis this coming Monday at 5:30.

Public hearings, for those who aren't familiar, are a staple of WV legislative politics. They are an occasion for political theater. Sometimes, they are a consolation prize for bills that are going to die but still have some support. Sometimes they are kind of random.

Whenever they have one on a topic of interest, I try to be there and sometimes to speak. Generally, they divide the total time by the number of people who want to speak to arrive at the the speaking time. It's usually pretty short, a minute or two.

I'm not sure how much political impact they have, but I've come to look at these events as an interesting English class/ rhetorical assignment: how can you deliver as pithy and sticky a message as possible within the limits? It's kind of like writhing a political haiku.

I'm working on my English homework now.

Rant alert

I feel a major one coming on. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe in print rather than online. But one's on the way.


The rant will be related to the "aquacalypse" that has hit around 300,000 West Virginians over the past several days.


I've been thinking about how when Senator Joe Manchin was governor he took down the popular "Wild, wonderful West Virginia" signs at the borders and put up ones that said "Open for business" until popular outcry got too loud to ignore.


(Maybe that sign should now be updated to say "Open for poison.")


West Virginia has indeed been wide open for certain kinds of business for the last 100 years or so to get away with murder, metaphorically and sometimes literally. And, with some notable exceptions, the state's political leaders have done all they could to help.


Now the chickens have come home to roost, as real chickens do. And one irony of all this is that this "open for business" attitude helped lead to this toxic mess that will make it even harder to attract the kinds of people and businesses and investments we need to move beyond the pillage economy.


I'd also like to ask a couple of WV's top level politicians a question. That question is this: "if the people of West Virginia one of these days get sick and tired of being sold out to corporations by politicians, how much do you think your life would change?"


My guess is, a lot.

Oh good

Well, I guess everybody can relax. John Boehner, Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, told the world in the wake of West Virginia's chemical mess that "we have enough regulations on the books."

According to Salon,

“I am entirely confident that there are ample regulations already on the books to protect the health and safety of the American people,” Boehner continued. “What we try to do is look at those regulations that we think are cumbersome, are over-the-top and are costing our economy jobs. That’s what our focus continues to be.”

That ought to take care of everything, right? I feel better already. I'm sure WV Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito agrees.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN REALITY, here's a good op-ed by a friend of mine on how we're trashing our water and why that might not be such a great idea.

What's next, West Virginia?

I don't know how other residents of the Mountain State feel right now, but I think after the chemical spill in Kanawha County, all we need now is a zombie outbreak to make everything perfect.

I tweeted that sentiment yesterday and a friend replied, "It is a challenge, living in a state that is actively trying to kill you."

Come to think of it, West Virginia's leaders have a history of letting corporations get away with murder, metaphorically and literally. Kill some miners with poor safety practices? Why not. Spread some black lung around? Sure. Waste a few hundred putting in that Hawk's Nest tunnel? Go ahead. And don't even bother asking if it's just a matter of trashing rivers, streams and mountains.

That seems to apply to perpetrators with money anyway, although poor people don't seem to get away with nearly that much.

One thing that might be a little different this time is that it just isn't some poor hillbillies up hollers who are being inconvenienced by the latest chemical spill, but some of the big dogs as well. (Of course, most of WV's real rulers don't live anywhere near WV).

The latest word is that it could be days before things get back to anything resembling normal in affected areas. Oh yeah, and this: the state ignored a proposal to tighten up chemical safety practices a few years back.

Meanwhile, I love this rhetorical question another friend expressed in an email: "Hey? Have we cut government and regulations enough???"

One last thought. Living out in the sticks can have its disadvantages at times, but this isn't one of them. I'll take Goat Rope Farm's well to city water any day of the week.