West Virginia lawmakers speak out about new EPA water standards

“Now I guess the real mission is how quickly we can get water back into everyone’s homes again,” West Virginia Congressman David McKinley (R-WV-1) said.

McKinley is referring to the “Do Not Drink” water crisis his home district of Vienna, West Virginia faced just a week ago. That’s when the U.S Environmental Protection Agency issued a lifetime drinking water health advisory standard. It’s standards that three West Virginia communities did not meet. McKinley said he hopes he can do something about it in Congress.

“I’m just one of two engineers, licensed engineers in Congress, so this whole issue is in my wheel house this is something we can resolve good engineering to, to resolve it and make out people comfortable,” McKinley added.

McKinley wrote a letter to the EPA asking for answers to questions like will the EPA help the people of Vienna and how many other communities in America face the same fate? McKinley isn’t the only lawmaker speaking out.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) said the issue also comes back to our nation’s infrastructure system.

“If you look at basically the age of a lot of the water lines in most any of your cities around the country the average age is about 80 years old,” Manchin said.

He said until that’s fixed, he’ll continue to push for a new filtration system for communities like Vienna to have safe water coming from their faucets.

“Everybody deserves to have clean air and clean water and we’re going to make sure that people do not have a hazard condition for them or their families,” Manchin added.

Both lawmakers said their staff remain in contact with the state, local and federal officials monitoring the situation.