On Monday, October 14, the East Palestine Village Council convened at the bi-monthly public meeting where guest speaker Mark Durno, Homeland Security Advisor, U.S. EPA Region, along with Chris Hunsicker from Norfolk Southern presented an update on derailment site clean-up. Watch the video and read the summary below.
Durno outlined the status of all the clean-up efforts to date and shared a color-coded site map with the phases of the final confirmation sampling, which is the collection of over 5,000 samples taken wherever the train derailment, construction, or cleanup operations had touched the community.
Restoration and Removal Activities
Durno noted that new grass is being planted in those areas that have been completed restored and metal sheets that provided stability and safety during the clean-up efforts are being removed where they are no longer needed. Also, any areas that had been cleared by sample analysis have been opened to allow the water to flow freely into the ditches. He also noted that the Park sampling had been completed and was given the all clear before the current construction was started.
Creek Sheen Assessment
Because of the recent near drought conditions, there has not been enough water in the creeks to do a proper qualitative assessment, which is the sheen scoring and one of the regulatory drivers for doing the creek cleanups. This assessment will be completed once sufficient water is available for testing and regardless of the outcome of the analytical work and the sheen assessment, the EPA plans to at least one more quarterly assessment. Durno noted that, “Leslie Run has cleaned up really nicely, but as we’ve talked about many times at these meetings, at Sulphur Run, we’ve got that combination of contamination that was present before the derailment and contamination was caused by the derailment. So, testing will continue.”
Full details will be available in the next EPA Train Derailment Response Newsletter.