MOBILE, Alabama -- When Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering Andrew Whelton and his research team drove nearly 900 miles from the University of South Alabama to test drinking water at the site of a massive chemical spill in West Virginia, they had no funding and no obligation to do so.
Just the same, they worked with nonprofits and took extraordinary steps to educate the public on how to safely flush contaminated water from their plumbing.
Now, the National Science Foundation is recognizing their response to the Jan. 9 chemical spill that dumped 7,500 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol -- a chemical used in the preparation of coal -- into Charleston's public water system.
The NSF announced today it has awarded Rapid Response Research grants to three universities, including Whelton's USA, in an attempt to better understand the properties of the poorly understood chemical that contaminated the drinking water of roughly 300,000 West Virginians.
According to the NSF, Whelton will examine the the chemical's absorption into -- and its potential removal from -- plastic drinking water pipes, focusing mainly on private residences.
"One of the concerns in this spill is authorities have little to no information about exactly what this chemical does to drinking water plumbing systems," Whelton said. "Chemicals tend to absorb more into plastic pipes than metal pipes. Plastic pipes can act as a sponge, sucking up chemicals."While state regulators lifted the ban on drinking water from the contaminated system, uncertainty remains about the damage caused, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Local residents have been instructed to run their water to help flush contaminated water out of their plumbing systems.
In addition to USA, the NSF has awarded a rapid response grants for West Virginia University to asses the extent of the drinking water contamination and Virginia Tech to study the physical behavior of the chemical in the environment.
The three university studies are necessary to model the environmental fate of the chemical, according to the UCS. The grant awards total about $150,000 and are for one year.
"I have never witnessed such a grand scientific need to characterize household plumbing system water quality," Whelton said. "We need to know more about the fundamental engineering and science of these interactions, which is why this is an NSF-funded project."
The Union of Concerned Scientists has recorded the work of Whelton's team on its blog.
Whelton said they started their work without funding because there wasn't yet a mechanism for funding the scientific need that the community deserves: