Toxic waste from the Ohio train disaster heads to 2 more cities as the EPA chief returns to East Palestine
By Holly Yan, CNN
The head of the US Environmental Protection Agency is set to make his third trip to East Palestine, Ohio — a town struggling to understand the full breadth of consequences from a toxic train derailment more than three weeks ago.
Michael Regan on Tuesday will visit the village of 5,000 people near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border to mark the opening of a new community center, said Debra Shore, the regional EPA administrator.
The federal agency set up the center where residents can drop in and meet with EPA officials and other agencies’ representatives to learn more about support services.
While the plumes of black smoke from the fiery February 3 derailment and the February 6 burn-off of toxic vinyl chloride may have subsided, a cloud of fear still permeates East Palestine as residents report health problems and worry about potential long-term health effects.
Concern also has spread to other states where toxic waste from the train wreck has headed.
The EPA ordered operator Norfolk Southern to pause further shipments of contaminated liquid and soil to Texas and Michigan after frustrated officials there said they got no warning waste from East Palestine was headed to their states.
The agency had approved two sites in Ohio to handle safe disposal of the waste: Heritage Thermal Services in East Liverpool and Vickery Environmental in Vickery, it said.
Now, two more sites — Heritage Environmental Services’ hazardous waste landfill in Roachdale, Indiana, and Ross Incineration Services in Grafton, Ohio — will receive contaminated waste starting Tuesday, Shore said Monday.
Shore spoke with officials from Ohio and Indiana on Monday about the shipment of hazardous waste material to their towns, she said.
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CNN’s Celina Tebor, Artemis Moshtaghian and Liam Reilly rcontributed to this report.
