Steve Eder and Eric Lipton

The river is lined with so many chemical facilities that the area where the Kanawha cuts through the Charleston region is known as Chemical Valley. One town, Nitro, even gets its name from a chemical — the nitrocellulose produced there for explosives.

In the 1980s, Anderson recalls, swimmers competing during an annual waterfront festival would enter the river with bright white swim caps, only to see them stained a murky brown.

“It’s a beautiful river,” she said. “You just don’t want to fall in.”

In fits and starts, the Kanawha has gotten the attention of environmentalists and federal officials concerned about water quality. Beginning in the 1960s, Republican and Democratic administrations in Washington made strides to restore polluted rivers across the country, including the Kanawha, the largest inland waterway in West Virginia.

Last year, there were even academic papers drawn up to make the Kanawha more desirable for swimming and fishing over the next two decades, building on an aggressive push during the Obama administration to reduce fecal bacteria, industrial pollution and heavy metals in the river.

But the environmental crackdown hit the chemical and coal industries hard, and they resisted much of it. Since the election of President Donald Trump, the most rigorous Obama-era restrictions have been blocked, delayed or killed, allowing many industries along the Kanawha and its tributaries to sidestep some cleanup and protection efforts.

The operator of the state’s largest power plant, which towers over the Kanawha about 20 miles upstream from here, has stopped design work on a water treatment system that would have removed most of the remaining pollutants — like arsenic, mercury and selenium — from discharges into coal ash ponds and the river.

And coal-mining companies are off the hook for needing to step up protections on hundreds of miles of streams and rivers in the Appalachian Basin, which includes the Kanawha. Republicans in Congress, with the support of several Democrats, repealed a rule last year curtailing mining practices that threatened streams and forests.

Rebecca McPhail, president of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association, said the rollbacks under the Trump administration had “provided a boost to confidence for manufacturing investment” in the state. Even without the federal rules, she said, businesses were “working to improve our ability to make the water we are putting out cleaner than when we brought it in.”

Many here cheer the counterattack on the mounting demands from Washington, which had been seen as a direct threat to jobs. Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, said the Obama administration proposed “impossible standards” that were unfair to coal mining. “Things are now getting back to balance, creating some certainty,” he said.

But others saw the Obama-era offensive as long overdue and mourn the faltering of decades of bipartisan consensus around clean-water protections. The likely consequences for ordinary people of the Trump administration’s interventions can be measured in many ways, including the hundreds of pounds of chemicals that continue to make their way into the river and the reduced protections for fish and sources of drinking water.

“I’m angry, but not surprised,” said Anderson, 68, a writer, graphic designer and singer who spoke up publicly about protecting the environment after a chemical spill in 2014 contaminated the city’s water supply.

During that emergency, she drove an hour from her Charleston home with her elderly parents to find a hotel — and a shower — with safe water. At a public hearing, Anderson sang her testimony — “If You Love My West Virginia” — a song she wrote about the neglect of the state’s waters and mountains.

‘Not Economically Practical’

Of the big polluters benefiting from the rollbacks, none looms as large as the John E. Amos Power Plant. The coal-powered utility sits upstream, just before the Kanawha begins a U-shape turn toward Charleston.

Giant plumes of steam and exhaust spew around the clock from its cooling towers, but its discharges into waterways pose one of the greatest harms.

The discharges have been highlighted repeatedly over the past two decades in studies by the Environmental Protection Agency. The waste has included arsenic, mercury and other toxic heavy metals, as well as selenium and other substances that kill fish or damage their reproductive systems.

The owner of the plant, the Ohio-based power company AEP, has taken steps to address some of the worst problems. Nonetheless, EPA records show, the plant continued to release significant levels of contaminants last year, including more than 400 total pounds of arsenic, mercury and selenium in the Kanawha and an adjacent stream.

Tens of thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals and other waste were dumped into coal-ash storage ponds next to the plant. Tests suggested some of the ponds had leaked substances, including arsenic and manganese, into groundwater, although AEP said there was no evidence these contaminants reached the Kanawha.

The EPA has estimated that coal-fired power plants like Amos are responsible for one-third of the toxic pollutants released into surface waters in the United States. The Obama administration ordered Amos and scores of other plants across the country to close many of their storage ponds and eliminate nearly all contaminants in their wastewater, something likely to require additional treatment devices.

The EPA in 2015 estimated that the changes to wastewater treatment alone would prevent the release of 1.4 billion pounds of pollutants a year into holding ponds, rivers, streams and groundwater.

“This is the most toxic, unregulated source of water pollution in the country,” said Elizabeth Southerland, who worked at the EPA for three decades, before retiring last year as the head of the water pollution office. “And it threatens the drinking-water supplies and fisheries of 2.7 million people who live immediately downstream of these coal-fired power plants.”

AEP and other plant owners had begun complying with the new requirement by designing expanded treatment systems. Under the current system at Amos, waste is collected in a smelly, dusty building a mile from the plant. A maze of pipes, filters and tanks skims off some of the toxic contaminants, but leaves others in the water.

The planning and design work for an expanded system was halted this past year at Amos and roughly two-thirds of the 80 power plants ordered to make the upgrades after the EPA moved to delay the Obama-era order by two years. The agency also indicated it might ultimately weaken the requirements.

AEP prides itself on complying with environmental standards. But Melissa McHenry, an AEP spokeswoman, said the company believed “it is not economically practical” to upgrade the wastewater treatment facility, given that its existing system can already remove about 90 percent of selenium, a major pollutant that kills aquatic life.

Without a federal order to update the system, she said, the company might have a problem recovering the cost — estimated to total tens of millions of dollars — from ratepayers in West Virginia, as it needs permission from state regulators to make capital improvements.

Closed, but Still Toxic

Much of the coal fueling the Amos plant comes from mines in West Virginia and elsewhere in Appalachia that have produced tens of billions of tons in coal and provided jobs for generations.

With the industry in decline, some of those facilities have shut down over the past decade. But there is a high risk that a mine will continue to pollute even after it closes. That’s what happened at Surface Mine No. 4A in Clay County, about 60 miles from Charleston.

At first glance, a stream near the mine appears picturesque, but aquatic life is missing and the water is tinged in white. The stream flows into the Leatherwood Creek, which eventually meets the Elk River and ultimately the Kanawha River.

Environmentalists sued the mine’s operator last year, contending that runoff from the mine contained high concentrations of sulfates, magnesium and other contaminants. The chemicals, they said, leached from soil that was dug out of the coal and later used to fill in missing hillsides.

Representatives from Southeastern Land, which owns the mine, did not respond to requests for comment. In court papers, lawyers for the mine’s previous owner acknowledged that there were discharges, but said steps were being taken to minimize the impact on nearby waters.

The federal government tried in 2016 to curb water pollution from mines by imposing the Stream Protection Rule. Finalized by the Interior Department in the waning days of the Obama administration, it mandated long-term monitoring and treatment of pollution from mines, even after active mining had ended.

The rule, now repealed, required a more rigorous level of monitoring than West Virginia, including through tests of insects and other living organisms in streams. But it applied only to facilities that opened or expanded after the regulation went into effect, so Surface Mine No. 4A was likely to be exempt.

The new federal rule and other changes, the Interior Department estimated in 2016, were expected to improve the water quality nationally in 263 miles of rivers each year — 174 of them here in the Appalachian Basin.

But the National Mining Association, which represents the coal industry, said that the rule would cost 78,000 coal mining jobs, and that suitable protections were already in place. Less than a month into the Trump administration, Congress passed a bill nullifying the rule, which Trump signed in front of coal miners.

“This rule we’re eliminating, it’s a major threat to your jobs, and we’re going to get rid of that threat immediately,” Trump said.

Joe Lovette, a lawyer and the founder of Appalachian Mountain Advocates, a group that handles litigation for residents hurt by mining pollution, considered the move a setback. “Old mines are the biggest concern,” Lovette said, adding, “There is this pollution that will discharge into perpetuity.”

A Crisis Forces Action

Many West Virginians have long accepted the environmental consequences of having polluting industries in the state, especially since they drive the local economy. Lovette would be the first to acknowledge that his objections do not reflect mainstream public opinion.

But the chemical spill that contaminated Charleston’s drinking water in 2014 served as a catalyst for change.

About 10,000 gallons of MCHM, used in cleaning coal, spilled from a ruptured storage tank at Freedom Industries, a company that processed and stored chemicals. The substance leaked into the Elk River, just upstream from the intake for the state’s largest water provider.

By the next morning, 300,000 people across the Charleston region were told not to use their water for drinking, cooking or bathing. The crisis lasted for 10 days, bringing the region to a standstill and prompting people to seek medical care for nausea and vomiting. Restaurants closed, and bottled water was scarce. The chemicals in the air smelled of black licorice.

“I was afraid and shocked,” said Anderson, who moved to the state in 1970 as a volunteer for the national VISTA service program and has lived for the past 37 years about a mile from the state Capitol and just a few blocks from the Kanawha.

State lawmakers, usually reluctant to challenge industry, quickly passed a sweeping law that required, among other things, annual inspections of aboveground storage tanks. The law was subsequently weakened by exemptions — the number of tanks regulated was reduced to 5,300 from about 48,000 — but it remains one of the country’s tougher regulations on industrial tanks.

The spill also focused the attention of federal regulators. After the contamination, a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups led to a consent decree requiring the EPA to complete spill prevention rules by 2019. The EPA, under President Barack Obama, considered a regulation that would have expanded its oversight of tanks, letting industry bear the compliance costs.

But in keeping with the hands-off approach of the Trump administration, the agency took a different route. Scott Pruitt, who was forced to resign over the summer as administrator of the EPA, proposed as one of his last acts that the agency would take no action.

“EPA believes that additional regulatory requirements for hazardous substances discharges would be duplicative and unnecessary,” Pruitt said in a news release.

If the EPA enacts Pruitt’s proposal, new safeguards on storage tanks — expected to cover 350 hazardous chemicals and tens of thousands of facilities across the country — will be shelved.

A Regulation Undone: The Stream Protection Rule

THE REGULATION: The Stream Protection Rule, put into effect in 2016 during the waning days of the Obama administration, curtailed mining practices that threatened streams and forests. It required long-term monitoring and treatment of pollution from coal mines, even after active mining had ended.

THE ROLLBACK: In February 2017, Congress passed, and President Donald Trump signed, a repeal of the rule.

THE CONSEQUENCES: Mining companies no longer need to increase protections for hundreds of miles of streams and rivers in the Appalachian Basin. In West Virginia, the repeal is especially consequential for mines after they shut down because the federal rule required a higher level of long-term monitoring than the state, such as tests of insects and other living organisms in streams.

BY THE NUMBERS10,000 gallons: The volume of MCHM, a chemical used in cleaning coal, that spilled from a ruptured storage tank at Freedom Industries in 2014. The substance leaked into the Elk River, just upstream from West Virginia’s largest water provider.

300,000: The number of people across the Charleston, West Virginia, region who were told not to use the water for drinking, cooking or bathing after the 2014 spill. The crisis lasted 10 days.

1.4 billion pounds: The amount of pollutants that would be prevented from being released each year into holding ponds, rivers, streams and groundwater if there were changes to wastewater treatment alone, the EPA estimated in 2015.

263 miles: The distance of rivers — 174 of them in the Appalachian Basin — where the new federal Stream Protection Rule and other changes were expected to improve the water quality each year, the Interior Department estimated in 2016.

78,000: The number of jobs that would be lost because of the Stream Protection Rule, according to the National Mining Association, which said that suitable protections were already in place.

27 days: The length of time the president had been in office when he signed a bill nullifying the rule.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/climate/20cli-westvirginia-numbers.html" id="39a29589-6b3c-3036-a0da-2bfc99835d97">The New York Times</a>.

River's Comeback Takes a Back Seat to Deregulation

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Kanawha River has never been clean, at least not since Colleen Anderson moved here nearly 50 years ago.

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Steve Eder and Eric Lipton

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River's Comeback Takes a Back Seat to Deregulation