Residents and Vance had pressed for a review of EPA’s actions
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Inspector General announced the investigation Tuesday to examine the agency’s handling of the February 2023 East Palestine train derailment and the health and environmental concerns that developed afterward. The derailment occurred in the small Ohio town on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border and sent a Norfolk Southern train off the tracks after a failed bearing, spilling chemicals that caught fire.
East Palestine residents and Vice President JD Vance had pressed for the review. The Associated Press described the derailment as “the worst rail disaster in more than a decade.” The EPA Inspector General’s office said the inquiry will determine whether the EPA fulfilled its responsibilities and whether it had “sufficient data to support the agency’s public communications” assuring residents they were safe to return home and live in the small town. It will also examine the health and environmental concerns that developed despite EPA assurances that no toxic levels of chemicals lingered in the community weeks and months later.
At the center of the emergency response was the decision three days after the derailment to blow open five rail cars and burn the vinyl chloride inside. Residents had evacuated after an assortment of chemicals spilled and caught fire following the late Friday night derailment.
The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the “vent and burn” move was unnecessary. The action generated a massive black plume of smoke and sent chemicals drifting across several states. At the time, officials in charge of the emergency response worried the tank cars might explode and do even more harm.
Testing experts have questioned whether EPA test data shared with the public obscured risks and whether the agency could determine how dangerous it is to be exposed to a mixture of chemicals. Health standards generally are based only on exposure to a single chemical.
Jami Wallace and other East Palestine residents had initially pressed the EPA to test whether cancer-causing dioxins were released in their hometown, and have since been pushing for the investigation. Wallace said, “I’m going to cry,” when she heard about the investigation.
Since the derailment, Wallace has kept track of more than 80 people who live in the area and have developed cancer, although it is difficult to prove that every illness is directly linked to the derailment. “It’s like we’ve had to push them along the way for every single thing they did, and then they didn’t even do it right,” Wallace said. “We’re not going to stop when you poison our kids.” She said she had promised never to give up the fight.
The recent political request from Vance and the head of the EPA helped get the investigation started. Multiple complaints from residents and whistleblowers also have been made in the years since the derailment.
Norfolk Southern has agreed to a $600 million class action settlement with residents, but the money has been largely tied up in the courts. Questions about the initial settlement administrator’s mishandling of the funds remain, and a group of residents has also sued, arguing that the class action attorneys misled them and pressured them into signing the deal.
A separate federal settlement includes a $15 million fine for Norfolk Southern and $55 million for decades of medical exams and groundwater testing. It has been under review for more than two years without a judge approving it.
Norfolk Southern is also seeking to merge with Union Pacific and create the nation’s first transcontinental railroad. The $85 billion deal still faces an extensive review by the Surface Transportation Board.
Wallace said she was unsure how much good the investigation might produce, but she expected it to continue to bring attention to the lingering concerns around East Palestine. “If nothing else, at least we’re getting attention again,” Wallace said. “And people know that we’re here and that we are not OK.”