Do We Need Norfolk Southern to Clean It Up? The Ohio Railroad Accidents in East Palestine, Ohio, is a No-Go Theorem
A toxic train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, that caused concern about health effects, and the fact that the train’s operator must pay to clean the mess, prompted the nation’s top environmental official to promise to support it.
The EPA requires Norfolk Southern to identify and clean up contaminated soil and water resources, as well as to reimburse them for cleaning services, attend and participate in public meetings at their request, and post information online.
President Joe Biden echoed the sentiment Tuesday, calling the EPA’s order “common sense.” This is their mess. They should clean it up, said the president in a post.
“I know this order cannot undo the nightmare that families in this town have been living with. It will start to deliver justice for what Norfolk Southern has done.
The governor of Pennsylvania said that the state environmental officials made a criminal referral against Norfolk Southern. The Ohio attorney general is also reviewing all actions the law “allows him to take,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/us/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-wednesday/index.html
The Ohio Railroad Derailment after the February 3 Fire: Air Quality Monitoring and Water Quality in a Small Village with Water Contaminants at the Pennsylvania Border
The February 3 train wreck that caused a fire that burned for a few days and forced crews to intentionally release a substance from the cars in order to prevent an explosion has left residents of the small village concerned about the safety of their air and water.
Some people in the community have reported health problems such as headaches and rashes, and more recently thousands of fish died in Ohio after a train derailed.
Air and water quality testing has so far found no dangers to residents of the small village near the Pennsylvania border after the February 3 derailment, and Regan said he has “absolute confidence” in the agency’s data.
Clarifying concerns about the integrity of the water, Regan and DeWine gave a toast to the residents of East Palestine, Ohio.
The governor of Pennsylvania accused the train operator of giving inaccurate information and failing to explore or articulate alternatives after the toxic wreck.
“In sum, Norfolk Southern injected unnecessary risk into this crisis,” Shapiro said, adding he plans to hold the company accountable for their actions.
Norfolk Southern President and CEO Alan Shaw said that his company has been aligned with the EPA and local efforts on the ground in East Palestine since the train derailment.
Shaw told CNN that he made a commitment to Norfolk Southern from the beginning. “We’re going to do it through continuous long-term air and water monitoring. We want to help the residents of this community recover, we want to invest in the long-term health of this community and we want to make Norfolk Southern a safer railroad.
Shaw said that his company continues to monitor air and water quality and has conducted hundreds of tests with thousands of data points, “all of which have come back clean.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/us/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-wednesday/index.html
The Toxic Derailment in East Palestine, a critical example of how rail safety measures have failed to meet Biden’s demands
The toxic derailment, which upended life in the community, has prompted calls for better rail safety and fueled questions about laws surrounding the movement of toxic substances.
“There is something fundamentally wrong when a train like this could come into a state and the current law does not require, despite what they were hauling, does not require them to notify the state or local officials,” DeWine said. The fact that the train did not qualify under the current law, is absurd.
President Biden called on Congress to help implement rail safety measures and accused the Trump administration of limiting the government’s ability to strengthen rail safety measures.
Biden wrote that this is more than just a train wreck or toxic waste spill, as he claimed that years of opposition to safety measures are coming home to roost.
The contaminated soil became a point of contention last week after a public document sent to the EPA on February 10 did not list soil removal among completed cleanup activities. It is not yet known what significance or impact the soil that was not removed before the railroad reopened on February 8 will have had on the surrounding areas.
East Palestine residents are dealing with concerns about potential impacts from the toxic wreck while crews continue their work.
The state opened a new health clinic for East Palestine residents to deal with their complaints of nausea and other symptoms.
Asked about the reported symptoms, the EPA administrator said Tuesday that he’s “not discounting what people are experiencing” and asked anyone concerned to seek medical attention.
People say that they are facing adverse impacts. We need to ask them to seek medical attention first and then we can add that information as part of our response. “We’re not discounting what people are experiencing at all. We don’t ask for help when we conduct all of our investigations.
Conaway said Tuesday at a news conference that the town needs to be cleaned up and residents need to feel safe in their homes. That is the number one thing. If you don’t feel comfortable in your home, then you won’t feel safe anywhere.
The 29-year-old conductor of the Cleveland-Cliffs Railroad, Incident #206, died in tragic loss of Louis Shuster
“Norfolk Southern has been in touch with the conductor’s family and will do all it can to support them and his colleagues. We are grieving the loss of a colleague today. Our hearts go out to his loved ones, as they go through this extremely difficult time.
The conductor, identified as 46-year-old Louis Shuster, was fatally injured early Tuesday morning at the Cleveland-Cliffs Cleveland Works property, the railroad said in a news release. It is the third incident involving the railroad in the state in just over a month.
“The NTSB is concerned that several organizational factors may be involved in the accidents, including safety culture,” the board said in a statement. An in-depth investigation will be conducted into the safety practices and culture of the company. The company must not wait to improve its safety, and it must do so immediately, according to theNTSB.
BLET Division 607 in Cleveland had a president who lived in Broadview Heights, Ohio. The union said that Shuster was an Army veteran and cared for his elderly parents.
“Lou was a passionate and dedicated union brother,” said Pat Redmond, Local Chairman of BLET Division 607. “He was always there for his coworkers. He helped veterans who worked on the railroad, as well as those who worked across the community.
“This was a tragic situation and it’s a devastating loss for the Shuster family as well as the members of this union,” said BLET National President Eddie Hall. “All railroad accidents are avoidable. The need for improved rail safety for both the workers and the public is underscored by this collision.
As the railroad works with the Environmental Protection Agency to remediate the site, it announced a new six-point safety plan Monday designed to help prevent similar derailments in the future.
A temporary shelter-in-place order was put out for homes 1,000 feet away from the crash site. Crews later determined nothing had spilled from the derailed cars and there was no environmental harm.
Two Senators in Minnesota are Proposing to Introduce a Federal Regulation Considering Rail Safety is a Public Property of the Railway Industry and Not a Private Business
Two legislators have taken action to address the concern of railway workers, after two train crashes in a month.
Who are they? Elected officials Michele Grim of Ohio (D) and Mike Jacobson of Nebraska (R) are working on passing legislation surrounding rail safety in their respective states, with the hopes it will become federal law as well.
This is not a partisan issue. This is an issue about doing the right thing. I’ve been in the finance business for 43 years. I like regulation, but I don’t like it as a banker.
I don’t know what the industry would look like without regulation. So a lot of people say, ‘Mike, you’re a Republican. Why would you want private business to have a mandate? I think that the railroads would probably like the universal rules that everyone would have to follow in order for them to be on a level playing field. All we’ve heard about from all the railroad companies after this is safety is their top priority. My response to that is, then prove it to me.
The transportation division of the sheet metal, Air, Rail and Transportation union (SMART-Ted) represents the conductors and has a requirement for a two person crew. Current federal law does not require two-peson crews, but the safety legislation and a proposed federal regulation would both require two-person crews.
The other one is making sure that railways have wayside defect detectors so that they can be alerted right away when there is an issue. This is the first legislation in the country that would require these wayside defect detectors.
Norfolk Southern Rail Safety Legislation Hearing in the Wake of a February 3 Delayed-Frequency Nuclear-Induced Derailment
Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw returns to Capitol Hill Wednesday facing pressure to support rail safety legislation proposed in the wake of his railroad’s massive toxic spill from a February 3 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
Shaw testified in support of rail safety improvements in his prepared testimony, but he stops short of endorsing the legislation in its entirety. The bill includes provisions, such as two-person crews on every railroad locomotive and a strict requirement for more frequent trackside monitoring devices meant to detect problems before a derailment occurs.
He supported the legislation to enhance the safety of the freight rail industry.
Shaw said the railroad would support increasing fines and penalties for people found tampering with railroad facilities and safety equipment, without endorsing proposals for potential fines on railroads found guilty of safety violations.
Shaw voiced his support for more industry-funded training for first responders. The company supports the principle of first responders needing accurate real-time information about the contents of trains traveling through their communities, he said. Information made available through an app is proposed by him.
But that level of support isn’t enough to satisfy supporters of the Senate version of the bill, including Sen. J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican and one of its cosponsors, or Republican Mike DeWine, Ohio’s governor. The residents who live near freight rail tracks are not able to depend on the railroad to improve safety.
“It is absurd that there are no notification requirements for trains carrying hundreds of thousands of pounds of flammable gases under pressure,” said Vance in his own prepared remarks. railroads claim they have an app There is an app! In their telling, there is no need for a federal requirement, because the railroads have an app, another voluntary standard.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/22/business/norfolk-southern-rail-safety-legislation-hearing/index.html
What Does the Vance-Brown Bill Tell Us about East Palestine? An Address to Klobuchar and the Committee on Transportation and Pedestrian Safety
When asked during by Sen. Amy Klobuchar during questioning if he supported the bill, Shaw responded, “There are many provisions within the Vance-Brown bill for which we give our full throated endorsement.” But when Klobuchar tried to pin him down on which provisions Norfolk Southern opposed, he dodged the question.
He moved away from his prepared remarks to attack the railroads. He was upset that the railroads attacked the bill even though Congress had tried to block the strike just months before.
“It’s not possible for you to convince the government to bail you out of a labor dispute and then say that it’s big government to have safety standards in the way that you conduct your railroads,” said Vance. It is a ridiculous argument. It doesn’t pass the smell test. The fact that they paid for their activism is offensive to the people of East Palestine.
The committee heard from Misti Allison, an East Palestine resident, who gave a face to the damage done to the town by the accident.
I told my seven year old that he was going to die if he lived in his own home. What do I tell him?” She asked if that was true. “This preventable accident has put a scarlet letter on our town. People do not want to come here. Home values are falling as businesses are struggling. We were unable to sell our homes if we wanted to leave.
Shaw announced plans Wednesday for the railroad to compensate homeowners who lose value in their homes, although did not give details of those payments in his opening remarks. It was more generous than the railroad had previously done to compensate homeowners who might see their home values impacted permanently. Allison told the committee that there are concerns in East Palestine about how it will recover from the effects of the train wreck.
“The railroads… want you to believe that technology is capable of replacing the role of the conductor,” said Clyde Whitaker, the Ohio legislative director of SMART-TD. “Nothing can be further from the truth.”
They called out the railroad in the letter for not supporting measures such as the two person crew requirement and having track side detection equipment no more than 15 miles apart from one another.
We are expecting you to deliver for the people of East Palestine by fully supporting these legislative efforts until they are enacted, said DeWine and Husted.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/22/business/norfolk-southern-rail-safety-legislation-hearing/index.html
On the Norfolk Southern Railway, the East Palestine Derailment, and the “Conventional Trajectory for a Mutually Interacting Railroad”
According to the union, Norfolk Southern gave instructions to their crews to ignore trackside problems if they were to keep their trains moving.
And Vance pointed out that one of the detectors that the Norfolk train passed before the East Palestine derailment detected more than a 100-degree rise in temperature of one of the rail cars on which a fire had started, but that was not enough to trigger a warning to the crew. By the time a subsequent detector found a more than 200-degree rise in temperature that triggered the alarm, it was too late to stop the train in time to prevent the derailment.
“We need to figure out at what sensor reading these trains need to stop, and it’s clear that the voluntary guidelines are too lax,” Vance’s said in his prepared remarks.