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West Virginia Chemical Spill Now Tough To Track In Rivers

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A water pollution control agency for the Ohio River says it will be difficult to tell if or when the chemical spill that contaminated West Virginians' water reaches the Mississippi River.

A model from the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission had predicted the spill would arrive Thursday at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, near Cairo, Ill. But the commission's manager of water resource assessment, Sam Dinkins, says chemical concentrations from the spill dropped below detection limits.

He says the compound was last detected near Louisville, Ky., about 380 miles upstream from the Mississippi River. He says water utilities farther downstream in Evansville, Ind., did not detect the spill.

A storage tank in Charleston, W.Va., leaked on Jan. 9, contaminating the water supply for 300,000 people.