# Unsafe Tap Water



## Cud579 (Apr 26, 2010)

There are 9 counties in West Virginia that have unsafe drinking water coming from their taps today due to a chemical spill. Do you have a easily accessible alternative water source? If not, then please think about this. 9 counties of people will all be heading to the store to buy water to drink with, cook with, brush their teeth with and wash dishes with. I was at the store 2 nights ago in Missouri and the bottled water at the local Wally world was about a 1/4 of what we normally have. I think this was due to all the freezing water pipes. I tell friends and family ALL the time to store water and food. By all means at least 2 weeks worth as a bare minimum.


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## NaeKid (Oct 17, 2008)

What I have done is I keep a 2.5-gallon jug of tap water in each of my fridges - refilled whenever they get low. I also keep three of the 10-gallon watercooler jugs in my basement that get swapped onto my water-cooler where the fourth-jug resides.

Beyond that - grey-water is collected in rain-barrels from the rain falling onto the roof of my house ... good enough for flushing


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## Woody (Nov 11, 2008)

I am one of those poor, disillusioned souls who believe that clean, safe drinking water will be a valuable thing in the near future. I also am one of the nuts who firmly believe that pumping toxic, carcinogenic, chemicals into the ground to extract 'clean' natural gas is a not so good idea. Pumping them further into the ground, under pressure, to dispose of them is also not my idea of a good thing.

I feel very sorry for the legacy our generation will leave behind.


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## readytogo (Apr 6, 2013)

*From normal to chaos in a minute.*

Chemical spill shuts down much of W.Va. capital
http://news.yahoo.com/chemical-spill-shuts-down-much-w-va-capital-115928916.html

This clearly shows how a situation can come about and changes your daily routing in a minute and again how do you prepared for it, things like this are totally unexpected, no alarms or warnings, life as we know it is not that simple folks and water is a required need for life.


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## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

With all the fracking and selling everything sacred about our formerly pristine country, I think we could easily be in a situation where there is little good drinking water. Call me paranoid.

I have a little water put up, but not nearly enough. Last weekend before it got very cold again, and we had another storm, a friend told me she went to the store and the clerk and she were laughing about all the "end of the world" people stocking up on supplies.

It was my opportunity to tell her about the CERT class I took and how we are asked by our government to have at least 72 hours worth of food, and 2 weeks of water is recommended by some groups. That made sense to her. 

She is one of those people who is a little OCD and cannot stand to see the same clothes in her closet and other things for very long. She lives a sparse life, but has the money to go get what she needs when she needs it, at least for now. I have seen her throw away perfectly good things because something about them bothered her.

After our conversation, I think she is going to at least get a couple gallons of water for her cupboards. I know she couldn't stand to eat something she thought was in the cupboard for very long.


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## lilmissy0740 (Mar 7, 2011)

Would a Berkey filter out the chemicals from a spill like that inWV?


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## musketjim (Dec 7, 2011)

Up here we have a well, so we use a PUR water filter. At our BOL we have a large Katadyn drip filter. Our refinery up here had a large sulfolane leak that wasn't caught for years. Didn't affect us as we are far enough away but a lot of folks have wells that they can't even use to water their gardens.


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## camo2460 (Feb 10, 2013)

lilmissy0740 said:


> Would a Berkey filter out the chemicals from a spill like that inWV?


I'm not sure if it would or not, I do know that there are filters that will remove chlorine, which is a chemical, so why not others?


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## Woody (Nov 11, 2008)

lilmissy0740 said:


> Would a Berkey filter out the chemicals from a spill like that in WV?


I don't really know either but it is my only easy option. I have a water distillation devise but do not know the vapor temps of all the nasties to know if it would cleanse them either. I'll have to stick with the Berkey and hope for the best. The sad part is that the companies that use fracking fluids do not have to tell what they are pumping into the earth, they are proprietary, meaning company secrets. They do not even have to let the EPA (Which we pay to protect our water) what they are!!!


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## trikey (Nov 8, 2012)

I am right north of this spill. A valuable lesson I have learned from this is in a complete shtf scenario it would probably be best to head north as a lot of the ground and water will be contaminated as most of these tanks will deteriorate without maintenance and float down stream.


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## Lake Windsong (Nov 27, 2009)

trikey said:


> I am right north of this spill. A valuable lesson I have learned from this is in a complete shtf scenario it would probably be best to head north as a lot of the ground and water will be contaminated as most of these tanks will deteriorate without maintenance and float down stream.


Just saying this as someone who has worked in one of those industrial parks on a river, but it may be a good idea to find out what types of companies are upstream as well.
Locally, schools in a nearby town were evacuated because a suspicious package was found on a railcar at a plant. One parent the media interviewed said she was worried because she had seen on social media that 'toxic chemicals were found in a rail car'. Well, not exactly. The toxic chemicals were not the reason for the evacuation. Those chemicals are and were always present. Being aware of the types of industrial hazards along your daily routes and evacuation routes is important. This includes transport on major highways, railways, and waterways--tanker trucks, railcars, and barges will present some unknown hazards that we may or may not be prepared to deal with in the event of a shtf scenario.


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## hiwall (Jun 15, 2012)

Charcoal will remove many chemicals but only for a time then it must be replaced. 
I can't see how the chemical in the water in WV is going to go away. Those people living there are screwed.


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## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

lilmissy0740 said:


> Would a Berkey filter out the chemicals from a spill like that inWV?


I am not sure. My daughter took a class about water and has become a little fanatical about it and how many toxic things are added to typical city water. We both use water filters, hers on her faucet, me a PUR pitcher. I looked at what it would take to remove fluoride, a chemical added to much water in America under the guise of cavity prevention, but is used as a fertilizer and requires hazmat suits for the people who work in the factories where it is manufactured. Research does not show that fluoride undoubtedly prevents cavities.

The carbon filters used on faucets and in pitchers, such as the PUR ones do not remove fluoride, and there is the possibility that it does not remove whatever is in the water in West Virginia.

You can get whole house water filters, and that would remove chlorine from water that gets into our bodies when we bathe and shower. But it does take special filters to remove things like fluoride, and certain other chemicals.


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## JayJay (Nov 23, 2010)

NaeKid said:


> What I have done is I keep a 2.5-gallon jug of tap water in each of my fridges - refilled whenever they get low. I also keep three of the 10-gallon watercooler jugs in my basement that get swapped onto my water-cooler where the fourth-jug resides.
> 
> Beyond that - grey-water is collected in rain-barrels from the rain falling onto the roof of my house ... good enough for flushing


I have 700 gallons.
Just put it in the Berkey--I'm good to go.
We drove 175 miles to buy 20 (30) gallon drums years ago.


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## ContinualHarvest (Feb 19, 2012)

lilmissy0740 said:


> Would a Berkey filter out the chemicals from a spill like that inWV?


It really depends on how that particular filter works with a particular chemical.
The chemical seems to be an organic solvent. So, in order to remove an organic solvent form the water, you need to find a way to create a precipitate that binds the chemical in a solid or semisolid state, then mechanically separate it out of your solution.


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## ContinualHarvest (Feb 19, 2012)

WVa is right next door. So I know its not much as I only have about <650 sq. ft. to live in. I've go 18 gallons put up at them moment, with the capacity to store another 70 with a bit of notice. 
It's more than what most of the sheeple have and I'm not far from water from various sources that can be purified.


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## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

Do we know what the chemical is? I have read that they can start the water on fire.


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## FrankW (Mar 10, 2012)

lilmissy0740 said:


> Would a Berkey filter out the chemicals from a spill like that inWV?


I dont know what's in that particular filter so the following is a general statement that may not apply to your filter ( is it ceramic or ion bed or activated charcoal or a combination ?)

A filter with an activated charcoal bed as a componene will generally filter hydrocarbons ( which is what was spilled here) quite well.

As a chemist with as little as was spilled here I would feel very comfortable drinking the water even if I was in the affected area if I had a in-house filter with a activated charcoal component.

But I dont know much about commercial brands
So if PM me the filter neds and I can answer with greater certainty


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## Lake Windsong (Nov 27, 2009)

weedygarden said:


> Do we know what the chemical is? I have read that they can start the water on fire.


I've read that it is a foaming agent, with a main chemical being a form of methanol (has a long name that I can't remember off hand). I've seen links to the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) of the methanol on certain news articles about the situation. Wondering if something else in the foaming agent is giving it the blue/green color and licorice smell they talk about...


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## FrankW (Mar 10, 2012)

even though methanol is in the name it is quite different from what we think of Methanol.
Its a 6 membered ring and one of the side chains is is -CH2-OH, the other is a basic Methyl group, -CH3.
They both hang off at different parts from the 6 membered ring..
Its properties are mainly determined by the fact that its a six membered ring (=fat soluble) but has an alcohol side group (=water soluble).


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## stayingthegame (Mar 22, 2011)

maybe someone who works for the filter companies could say if they remover that chemical. it may be that they can test (or need to test) their filters to see.


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## Sam78 (May 29, 2012)

weedygarden said:


> Do we know what the chemical is? I have read that they can start the water on fire.


it's 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol. i live in one of the counties affected and i was also very interested if a Burke filter or any other filter could filter this organic compound out.


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## CulexPipiens (Nov 17, 2010)

In addition to all the home owners affected, the business are too. Restaurants, for example, can't be open if they don't have working water.

@WeedyGarden... any flouride benefit to our teeth in a topical fashion. So drinking flouride to help our teeth is like ingesting sun screen to help our skin. It just don't make sense.

Besides storing water, look at a way to procure more if the local sources are contaminated. Rain catchment being the most obvious. Initial flush to dump the first few minutes of water, then route into your storage system via multiple levels of filtering.


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## FrankW (Mar 10, 2012)

Sam78 said:


> it's 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol. i live in one of the counties affected and i was also very interested if a Burke filter or any other filter could filter this organic compound out.


I know nothing about any particular brand of filter,
Its what technology they use that matters.

ion exchange resins will do little with this compound and and ceramic filters will also ahve little effect.

look at your filters description
If it says activated charcoal it will filter the chemical

How well it filters is will depend on the thickness of that layer.

Only 5000 gallons are supposed to have been released.

At this amount there is little risk for washing hands or showering.

I have been exposed to much greater concentrations of similar compounds or to put things into persp[ective

If you use an aggressive hydrocarbon based gun cleaner and dont wear gloves you will expose yourself much much more than when washing/showering in that kind of water.

but it doesnt meet public exposure guidelines (which are based on lifetime consumption) even downstream so they have to turn off the tap


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## FrankW (Mar 10, 2012)

hiwall said:


> Charcoal will remove many chemicals but only for a time then it must be replaced.
> I can't see how the chemical in the water in WV is going to go away. Those people living there are screwed.


No they are not only 5000 gallons have been spilled
And even if it was 5 times as much given the size of the water table there, this is much ado about nothing.

It because public exposure guideline are so low.
And they are low because they are based on lifetime exposures.


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## catdog6949 (Apr 25, 2012)

*Smell to the Water?*

Some people say they can smell a liqourice smell, if you can smell it don't drink it! (Yes I know some thing's you cannot smell). Water is the most important, item in our Survival Gear, we have 90 days counting, hot water heater, and Bathtub BOB.

Remember 3 minute's without Air, 3 Day's without Water, 3 Week's without Food, we all talk about Prepping, well this spill is a Perfect Example!

Cat and Turtle


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