Shipment of contaminated waste after derailment to Ohio to resume

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio. Shipping of contaminated waste from an eastern Ohio train derailment that burned down earlier this month to two approved facilities in Ohio will resume on Monday, according to federal environmental officials.

The announcement comes a day after the Environmental Protection Agency ordered Norfolk Southern to “suspend” shipments from the Feb. 3 crash site in East Palestine in order to take additional oversight of where the waste was sent. Some liquid and solid waste has already been removed to facilities in Michigan and Texas.

EPA-certified facilities capable of receiving some of the waste have been identified, meaning shipments could resume on Monday, Region 5 Administrator Debra Shore of the Environmental Protection Agency said Sunday.

Some of the liquid waste will be sent to a facility in Vickery, Ohio for disposal in an underground injection well, Shor said. Norfolk Southern will also begin sending solid waste to an incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio, and is currently looking for additional solid waste disposal sites, she said.

“This is all great news for East Palestinians and the surrounding community because it means the cleanup can continue at a brisk pace,” she said.

The Ohio governor’s office said Saturday night that five of the 20 trucks (about 280 tons) of hazardous solid waste were returned to East Palestine after 15 trucks were disposed of at a hazardous waste recycling and disposal facility in Michigan. Shore said materials sent to sites in other states but later returned to East Palestine will now be sent to two sites in Ohio.

All rail cars, with the exception of 11 cars owned by the National Transportation Safety Board, have been removed from the site, allowing additional contaminated soil to be excavated and test wells installed to test for groundwater contamination, said Anne Vogel, director of the National Transportation Safety Board. Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

No one was hurt when 38 Norfolk Southern vehicles derailed in a fiery, mangled mess on the outskirts of town, but as concerns grew over a potential explosion from hazardous chemicals in five railcars, officials evacuated the area. They later decided to release and burn the toxic vinyl chloride from the tank cars, causing the flames and black smoke to rise into the sky again.

Federal and state officials have repeatedly said that it is safe for evacuees to return to the area, and that air tests in the city and hundreds of homes have not revealed any significant levels of pollutants. The state says the local municipal drinking water system is safe and bottled water is available to those with private wells. Despite these assurances, many residents expressed a sense of disbelief or questioned what they had been exposed to and how it would affect the future of their families and communities.

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