EPA Response to Ohio Train Derailment to Undergo Investigation

The Environmental Protection Agency's response to the 2023 East Palestine train derailment is set to be investigated by the agency's Office of Inspector General. The review was prompted by requests from residents of the Ohio-Pennsylvania border town and from U.S. Senator JD Vance.

The investigation will assess the EPA's actions following the rail disaster, which was the worst in more than a decade, as well as subsequent health and environmental concerns. This comes despite the agency's assurances that toxic chemicals did not linger in the community after the incident.

The derailment occurred in February 2023 when a Norfolk Southern train, carrying an assortment of chemicals, left the tracks after a reported bearing failure. Residents were evacuated, and three days later, officials made the decision to detonate five rail cars containing vinyl chloride to prevent a potentially more dangerous explosion. The National Transportation Safety Board later determined that this "vent and burn" procedure was unnecessary, though officials at the time worried about the risk of tank car explosions.

Residents like Jami Wallace have been advocating for accountability and testing, including for cancer-causing dioxins. Wallace expressed emotional relief upon hearing about the investigation, having tracked over 80 local residents who have developed cancer since the derailment, acknowledging the difficulty in definitively linking every illness to the event.

"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 stated. "We’re not going to stop when you poison our kids."

The Inspector General's office will examine whether the EPA fulfilled its responsibilities and if the data provided to the public adequately supported the agency's communications regarding resident safety. Some testing experts have previously questioned the EPA's data, suggesting it might have obscured risks and that determining the danger of exposure to the chemical mixture was complex, as health standards typically consider single chemical exposures.

Norfolk Southern has agreed to a $600 million class-action settlement with residents, though the distribution of these funds has faced legal challenges. Additionally, a separate federal settlement, including a $15 million fine for the railroad and $55 million for medical monitoring and groundwater testing, has been awaiting judicial approval for over two years.

Meanwhile, Norfolk Southern is pursuing an $85 billion merger with Union Pacific to create the nation's first transcontinental railroad, a deal that is undergoing extensive review by the Surface Transportation Board.