Step Aside, W. Va: In KY, Our Drinking Water is Poisoned By Companies Owned by State Legislators

Note that they don't know how much of this chemical spilled, but they definitely know that it's perfectly harmless.

John Cheves at the Herald:

A coal-mining company owned by state Rep. W. Keith Hall, D-Phelps, spilled an undetermined quantity of a chemical into his constituents' drinking water supply in Pike County earlier this month, state and local officials said Thursday.

On April 4, the Phelps Fire Department responded to a report of a chemical spill at Hall's BMM Inc., according to the Kentucky Division of Water, which is now in charge of the investigation. Photos show a white, foamy liquid pouring from the front of a blue building on the property, crossing a parking lot and running into a stream that leads to Peter Creek, which flows into the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River upriver from a local drinking-water intake.

"A gel-like substance" was still "seeping from the building" on April 9 when a state inspector toured the site, but it was not running into the stream five days later, said Dick Brown, a spokesman for the Division of Water. No sample was collected, Brown said.

Of course not!  What possible reason could there be for a state agency in charge of ensuring clean drinking water for Kentuckians to collect a sample of a foamy, gel-like substance leaking from a coal-mining company into a source of drinking water?

I mean, it's not like the eastern Kentucky coal fields form the watershed for the Kentucky River, which is the source of drinking water for about half the state. Oh, wait.

Meanwhile, coal is our future!