Crews are removing contaminated waste from an Ohio site where a train derailed earlier this month. The train was carrying toxic chemicals, which officials decided to leak slowly and burn to avoid an explosion, and the city of East Palestine was evacuated during the burn.
Over the weekend, the Environmental Protection Agency approved moving contaminated soil shipments to “two EPA-certified sites in Ohio: Heritage Thermal Services in East Liverpool and Vickery Environmental in Vickery,” CNN reported.
The shipment contains around 1.8 million gallons of contaminated waste, per CNN.
“We owe it to East Palestine and residents nearby to move waste out of the community as quickly as possible,” Debra Shore, EPA’s regional administrator, told The Washington Post.
And the people of East Palestine want it gone.
Shore said after speaking with residents, it was obvious “that everyone wants this contamination gone from the community,” per CNN.
Soon after the Norfolk Southern train cars derailed and threats of explosion were minimized, residents returned to their homes, with reassurances there were no harmful levels of toxicity remaining in the area.
However, residents soon started to complain about rashes, headaches, nausea and other symptoms that they say only appeared after the accident.
House GOP will hold Ohio train derailment hearings
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee are considering a probe into what happened with the wreck and the Biden administration’s response to it, Axios reported.
Republicans and East Palestine residents are upset with the length of time it took for the Biden administration to respond to the crash. They also complained that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took too long to visit the site, coming to the town three weeks after the accident.
“The infrastructure failure that caused the derailment has led to an environmental disaster,” a letter from House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer reads. “The Committee is deeply concerned by DOT’s slow pace in resolving this matter.”
President Joe Biden partially blames former President Donald Trump for the accident, tweeting that the administration before him “limited our ability to implement and strengthen rail safety measures.”
According to Axios, Biden’s administration is sending federal agencies “door to door in East Palestine this weekend to check in on each family personally.”