In West Virginia, whitewater rafting and the long tail of a chemical spill

 

FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. — Dave Arnold stares at the giant whiteboard, searching for clues that his slow summer may finally be picking up, lifting like the New River Gorge’s morning fog.

The whiteboard hangs inside the storefront of a local photo studio. It lists every commercial whitewater rafting trip for the coming week on the New and Gauley rivers. Every Sunday night, the studio owner’s wife grabs a dry-erase marker and climbs a stool to update the data. Photographers use it to schedule shoots of rafters. The rafting companies use it as a vital economic snapshot. They anticipate its arrival like stock traders waiting on the latest corporate earnings. And so every Monday morning, like this one, they gather here, in a narrow hallway in the center of town, to study the signs.

In an instant, Arnold can see how his company, Adventures on the Gorge, and the six other rafting outfitters are measuring up.

“It’s a hair slow,” he says now. “I’m positive some of it is linked to the spill.”

The spill. In January, 10,000 gallons of a chemical used in the mining industry poured into the Elk River in Charleston, 60 miles away, a toxic mess that never reached the waters here, but one that Arnold and others believe hurt business, just the same.

“My whole life has been about selling West Virginia,” he said. “Never before have we seen an event that caused so many negative reactions.”

The spill is the latest challenge for rafting companies on the ...more