"Report Outlines W.Va.’s Chemical Leak Missteps"

"In its most frank assessment since last year’s leak at Freedom Industries, the Tomblin administration said Friday that West Virginia had inadequate environmental regulations to prevent such an incident and lacked sufficient training and planning to respond once toxic chemicals had contaminated the Kanawha Valley’s regional water supply.

State officials bungled their efforts to explain the crisis to the public, government agency websites were 'embarrassingly out of date at the time of the incident,' and even top staffers for Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin were not properly prepared to manage the response to the loss of clean drinking water for hundreds of thousands of residents, the administration said in an 'After Action Review' made public on the anniversary of the spill.

'The Freedom Industries chemical leak incident . . . was unique and unprecedented,' the report said. 'There was no roadmap for handling the intricacies of this particular crisis.'"

David Gutman and Ken Ward Jr. report for the Charleston Gazette January 9, 2015.