From the Department of Creative Cognitive Dissonance: the governor of W. Virginia, Earl Ray Tomblin, is trying to convince people that the spill of a coal cleaning chemical doesn't have anything at all to do with King Coal. From "Freedom to spill: Coal must take bad with good" at the Coal Tattoo blog of the WV Gazette:
Also at the Saturday briefing Tomblin pushed back at a reporter who connected the ongoing water crisis to the coal industry.
"This was not a coal company incident," the governor shot back. "This was a chemical company incident."
On Sunday night he did the same.
"This was not a coal company, this was a chemical supplier, where the leak occurred," he said. "As far as I know there was no coal company within miles."
But critics of the governor and his approach to regulatory matters say that the leak provides an all-too real portrait of ongoing threats to the state's public health that the state does little to address. The leak, at the chemical tank farm Freedom Industries, was just 1.5 miles upstream from West Virginia American Water's regional intake.
Get it?
There wasn't a coal company nearby; therefore, the spill couldn't possibly be coal-related! Even the vice president of the West Virginia Coal Association agrees:
"This is a chemical spill accident. It just so happens that the chemical has some applications to the coal industry, just that fact alone shouldn't cause people to point fingers at the coal industry," said Jason Bostic, vice president of the West Virginia Coal Association.
Got it!