SMALL STATE BLUES

In the last posting of this blog, I reviewed James Madison's ideas concerning the political sins committed in small territorial republics. In short, he argued that in a small republic the common good is less likely to be achieved because in a small political arena the chances are that one or very few factions – interest groups – would have inordinate influence over government policy makers. Why? Because relative to the wealth of the republic, these interest group(s) would own or have control over a significant amount of that wealth and/or other political resources. As I mentioned in that posting, Madison had first-hand knowledge of what he argued since he belonged to the elite group that controlled the politics of his home state, Virginia. He was the owner of a plantation. So were Washington, Jefferson, and Monroe, to name a few. Of course, all four of these examples later became presidents of the national republic. But even if we agree with Madison's argument based on conditions of over two hundred years ago, does his view still hold today?

In this context, I found a report on the politics of West Virginia very interesting. In that small republic, apparently their politics are not controlled by a gaggle of plantation owners, but instead their politics are highly influenced by the coal and chemical industries. This arrangement came to national attention lately when a chemical company's storage tank developed a hole which in turn caused a highly toxic chemical to ooze into that West Virginian area's drinking water. This resulted in 300,000 people being deprived of usable water for days. The effects of the contamination continued to affect the folks in the area as they remained suspect of the water since it continued to smell. Since then, it still has not been determined how extensive the toxicity of the water supply is and, to date, 400 people have been reported ill as a result of the spill.¹

Is this just an anomaly, a case of an accident, or is it closer to being the result of an industry being too cushy with the state government – a la Madison? Or stated another way, has the chemical company been allowed to run its affairs in a purely self-serving way; that is, to further or protect its financial interests? What is it?

Let's look at the record as it applies to both the coal mining and chemical industries. In the mining industry, worldwide, thousands die annually. In this country, the incidence of fatal accidents has become significantly fewer although through the twentieth century there were some memorable events. For example, in 1968 there was the Farmington, W. Va. mining disaster that killed 78 miners. I highlight this incident because among those who lost their lives was Senator Joe Manchin's uncle and five classmates. Today Manchin is a strong defender of the coal and chemical industries. As it turns out, West Virginia has been afflicted with five major incidents involving the coal and chemical industries in eight years.²

Apparently this latest incident is not an anomaly:

“This crisis is about much more than a renegade chemical company,” said Bob Kincaid, board president of Coal River Mountain Watch, an organization based in Raleigh County in the state's southern coal fields that fights mountaintop-removal mining. “It's about an entire state subjected day after day for more than a century to a laundry list of poisons by renegade companies. This particular poisoning happened to catch the world's attention, but for us, it's another day in the Appalachian Sacrifice Zone.”

The question is, [w]ill the nation continue to turn a blind eye to the mounting toll of the aging extraction industry on the health and livelihoods of central Appalachians or take action against the growing, untenable costs of mining, cleaning, transporting and burning dirty coal?³

But the question remains, how has the state government of West Virginia acted in relation to these conditions?

According to The New York Times article, cited here, the following list of actions has characterized the state government's response to the related health and safety issues:

• There are no state laws that regulate the storage location of chemicals such as those that leaked from the tanks in question. Therefore, these tanks, situated dangerously close to the Elk River, the major fresh water supply of the area, were legally placed. A distinction between production facilities and storage facilities exists in state law but there are no regulations addressing storage.
• Federal law, in which West Virginia's representatives have had influential roles determining its content, requires reporting chemical storage facilities, but does not call for inspection of them.
• State officials did not deem the spilled chemical into the Elk River as deserving a legal designation as “extremely hazardous” despite the fact the company that owned the tanks had described them as “immediate (acute) hazards.”
• In 2010, the state government sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its water pollution standards as they applied to the coal industry. This position was recently bolstered by the current governor when he was quoted as saying, “ never back down from the E. P. A.”
• West Virginia has a unique provision in its environmental laws which states that any new regulation written by its environmental agency has to get a majority vote in both houses of its legislature before taking effect. This is a significant extra hurdle that pending regulations have to overcome before taking effect. The legislature has the authority to change any details, including striking any provision of any regulation.
• The state has allowed the oil company, Halliburton, to keep confidential the chemicals it uses in its fracturing activities despite state regulations to the contrary.
• The state's environmental regulatory department recently began allowing an increase in the allowable amounts of aluminum, a toxic mining pollutant, into the state's waterways. This pollutant, beyond being toxic to fish, is expensive to remove.
• State officials have filed lawsuits against PPG Industries at the request of PPG. The aim was to outmaneuver lawsuits by environmental groups. State lawsuits call for much more lenient decisions toward PPG's water pollution activities than would have been called for if the environmental groups' lawsuits would have been successful.
• Current efforts to update the Toxic Substances Control Act – of 1976 vintage – are being pushed by the state of West Virginia's representation in Congress. The update has been judged by the Natural Resources Defense Council's representative as toothless. It doesn't even legislate the disclosure of information or further regulate the toxic substance that oozed into the Elk River.
• The state's environmental regulatory department, which employs 800 people, has a separate office to regulate the coal industry. According to one knowledgeable observer, “Dow Chemical and a car wash are regulated in the same office. Mining gets a separate office.”⁴ Since the observer refused to be identified for fear of retribution, the implication is that the arrangement exists to give coal companies favorable treatment.

Is this a cherry-picked list of complaints? Perhaps; I'm not an expert. But given the state's apparent support of the coal and chemical industries, perhaps this favoritism is allowed and even encouraged if it results in providing benefits to the people of West Virginia. Well, according to the Times, West Virginia is 49^th out of 50 states in median household income (it was 46^th in 1969). The coal industry today hires about 4 percent of the labor force. And yet Manchin was quoted as saying, “[i]f it weren't for the resources we had here, you wouldn't have the middle class.” Whether the “we” is the national middle class or that of West Virginia, it is Senator Manchin's job to represent the interests of all the people in his state. Are the politics of this small republic advancing the interests of these people? Or is it as Madison warned: advancing and protecting the interests of its few major factions?

1Breslin, S. (2014). West Virginia chemical spill worse than initially reported. The Weather Channel, January 28, http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/west-virginia-chemical-spill-latest-20140128. 

 

2Gabriel, T., Wines, M., and Davenport, C. (2014). In a state wary of regulations, a chemical spill changes little. The New York Times, January 19, pp. 1 and 16 (“front page” section). Most of the facts reported in this posting were derived from this article.

3Biggers, J. (2014). How dirty coal foretold West Virginia's disaster. Aljazeera America, January 14, http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/1/west-virginia-chemicalspillcoalminingcleanwater.html .

4Op. cit., Gabriel, Wines, and Davenport, p. 16.