"She Was Screaming in the Tub"
Mother Jones
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This story was originally published in the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Videos produced by Climate Desk’s Tim McDonnell.
On the morning of January 9, Twylla Bays pumped a syringe of water into the gastric feeding tube in her 29-year-old daughter Cassy’s abdomen. The reaction was instantaneous and violent: in the space of 30 minutes, Cassy, who has muscular dystrophy and is on a ventilator, had seven bouts of diarrhoea.
At about that time, 15 miles away in Charleston, West Virginia, executives of West Virginia American Water and state officials were deciding when and how to tell 300,000 people their water was not safe to drink.
By 5pm, when word reached Twylla Bays that her tap water was so contaminated it was only fit for flushing toilets, she had given Cassy two more 150cc injections of water along with her medicine and food. Each time, Cassy was sick.
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