A U.S. Environmental Protection Commissioner in East Palestine, Ohio, spoke at a media conference on Thursday, September 3: An update on the train-derailment incident
The head of the US Environmental Protection Agency traveled to East Palestine, Ohio, on Thursday and said the agency plans to hold the train company Norfolk Southern accountable for its role in the derailment of a train carrying hazardous chemicals earlier this month.
The EPA administrator told CNN that it has full authority to use its resources to deal with the crisis.
According to Regan, the company has signed a notice of accountability and will be responsible for the clean up. “But as this investigation continues, and as new facts arise, let me just say, and be very clear, I will use the full enforcement authority of this agency, and so will the federal government, to be sure that this company is held accountable.”
The train carrying the toxic chemicals went off the tracks in East Palestine, a town of under 5,000 people along the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. The air and water in the area were deemed safe enough for the people to return about five days after the wreck.
State officials have repeatedly said water from the municipal system – which is pulled from five deep wells covered by solid steel casing – is safe to drink. However, the state’s EPA encouraged residents who get water from private wells to get that water tested, the governor’s office said.
Despite the assurances, a chemical odor lingered days afterward and officials estimate thousands of fish were killed by contamination washing down streams and rivers, fueling residents’ concerns about water and air safety.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/us/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-thursday/index.html
State of the East Palestine Railroad Derailment and Health Care During the April 1st Oriole Super-Marinae Event
Hundreds of East Palestine residents attended a town hall Wednesday night to express their frustrations and mounting distrust. The train operator was supposed to be at the event but later pulled out due to safety concerns.
Some of the work being done to clean up the mess from the train accident was observed by Regan during his visit Thursday. The state has primary responsibilities over the scene, and the EPA is prepared to partner and provide necessary resources.
The full spectrum of toxic chemicals on that train were being tested. We have the capabilities to detect every single adverse impact that would result from that spill, and that’s what we’re doing,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Thursday he has requested the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention immediately send medical experts to East Palestine to evaluate and counsel community members with questions or health symptoms.
In anticipation of rainfall, emergency response teams have plans in place to prevent contaminants not yet removed from the derailment site from washing into local waterways during the storms, DeWine said in a statement.
The governor said a chemical plume of butyl acrylate in the Ohio River is currently located near Gallipolis, Ohio, and will be near Huntington, West Virginia, sometime tomorrow. He said tests show the chemical is currently below the level that the CDC considers hazardous. No vinyl chloride has been detected in the Ohio River, he added, though agencies will continue sampling river water out of an abundance of caution.
The risk to livestock remains low and the food supply is safe despite the train accident, according to the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/us/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-thursday/index.html
East Palestine Train Derailment: Why I’m Here, Why You’re Here, and Why You Shouldn’t Ignore It
“Is it OK to still be here? Are my children safe? Are they safe? Is the future of this community safe? East Palestine resident Lenny Glavan told reporters at the meeting. “We all know the severity of that question, and what’s at stake. Some people say they are downplaying, while other say they don’t.
The Mayor told a group of reporters at Wednesday’s meeting that they had two options, one of which was to explode the tanks. “Yes, harmful chemicals went into the air. I apologize, but that is the only option we had. If we didn’t do it, we were going to have a lot of detonations, and we were going to have a lot of injuries.
Conaway told reporters that he needed help. I have a village on my back and I will do what is necessary to make this right. I’m not leaving, I’m not going anywhere.”
Representatives of Norfolk Southern were planning to attend the Wednesday night meeting to provide information to the residents about the crisis. The company backed out due to threats.
The company said in a release they were increasingly concerned about the physical threat to their employees and community surrounding the event due to the increasing likelihood of outside parties.
When asked about the absence of the company at the meeting, Velez said it was a slap in the face.
Velez and his family are temporarily staying in rentals away from the town. He previously told CNN that when he visited the town Monday, a chemical odor left his eyes and throat burning, and gave him a nagging headache.
Most people had to leave but they didn’t want to. So, all the people who had to go home were complaining of smells, pains in their throat, headaches, sickness,” he said. “I have gone back a few times, and the smell does make you sick. It hurts your head.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/us/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-thursday/index.html
A Transportation Safety Advocate: Why we need a railroad company to act now, but we won’t know when it will go,” he told reporters
They didn’t show up for the town hall meeting last night and I was very disappointed. The public deserves transparency,” he said. The public deserves to have up-to-date information. It is our job as federal government to hold this company accountable, and I promise you that will happen.
Cozza said the railroad company told her it was ok to return home after air testing. She insisted the railroad company do water and soil tests and only after that a toxicologist deemed her house unsafe.
Cozza said that he would have been sitting in that house right now if he hadn’t used his voice.
Buttigieg also wants Congress to raise the maximum amount the DOT can fine railroads for safety violations. He’s concerned that the big railroad corporations will write off fines as a cost of doing business, because fines are so low right now.
He’s also calling on Congress to “untie” the agency’s hands in regards to legislation that weakened the Department of Transportation’s ability to enforce certain safety and accountability rules.
“People who have sided with the rail industry again and again and again are suddenly acting like rail safety advocates,” Buttigieg said. “But it also creates the chance to call them to the table and say, ‘OK, if we’re serious now, let’s do this.’”
Buttigieg, who has faced some criticism for not visiting the crash site, says he has stayed away to allow the National Transportation Safety Board take the lead on the investigation of the cause and for emergency management to focus on the immediate response. He wants to visit the site someday, but there is no date for it.
Speaking to reporters on Monday evening, Buttigieg said he wants rail companies to speed up their phasing in of sturdier, more puncture-resistant tank cars that carry volatile or toxic substances. The DOT mandated the new tank cars be in use and older, weaker ones to be phased out by 2025. But Congress delayed that new tank car deadline until 2029.
He said that the maximum fine for egregious violations relating to hazardous materials is $225,000. It’s not enough for a rail company with billions of dollars in profits every year to have an adequate deterrent effect.
The DOT might revise how it defines toxic and volatile chemicals. While the derailed Norfolk Southern train was considered one carrying hazardous materials, it was not considered a “high hazard flammable train,” or HHFT, which requires certain safety protocols be followed.
He wants to require trains carrying hazardous materials be equipped with a higher level, electronically controlled braking system. In 2015, the DOT enacted a rule requiring electronically controlled pneumatic brakes on trains with more than 20 HHFT cars, but Congress mandated a cost benefit analysis be conducted before it could take effect, and then in 2017, the Trump administration repealed the rule.
The Buttigieg Problem: Why Do We Live in a Trapped City? Why Are We Here? When Do We Learn to Talk about East Palestine?
Buttigieg said that the disasters are not treated as a cost of doing business. The situation in East Palestine gave Congress a window of opportunity to raise the bar on safety.
“It’s really rich to see some of these folks – the former president, these Fox hosts – who are literally lifelong card-carrying members of the East Coast elite, whose top economic policy priority has always been tax cuts for the wealthy, and who wouldn’t know their way around a T.J. Maxx if their life depended on it, to be presenting themselves as if they genuinely care about the forgotten middle of the country,” the Transportation Secretary said. “You think Tucker Carlson knows the difference between a T.J. Maxx and a Kohl’s?”
He says he was paying attention to train safety since coming onto the job two years ago and was paying close attention to the East Palestine derailment before it flared up as a political issue. His staff, which struggles to keep up with the intense incoming, counted 23 interviews he did in nearly three weeks between the train going off the tracks and the Republican embrace of it as a cause. Buttigieg didn’t get a single question on it.
But he also punched back at critics, arguing that many of the problems he’s being blamed for are only partially connected to his portfolio and mostly out of his direct control.
The more civil statements from the GOP have come about because Marco Rubio and other Republicans think he should resign over not moving sooner on East Palestine. Donald Trump Jr., for example, insisted he only got the job because he was “that gay guy.” Even some Democrats are publicly raising doubts – West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, told CNN, “People have to have a confidence – and they have more confidence when they see leaders.” Manchin added that Buttigieg “has to make that decision if he feels he’s being effective.”
To the left, the former mayor of SouthBend, Indiana, is an epitome of compromise without vision or guts. To the right, he is the embodiment of elitist abandonment of real Americans, hopped up on his own grandiosity, who thinks more about social engineering than transportation.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/05/politics/pete-buttigieg-ohio-train-derailment/index.html
What do transportation officials say about the experience of buttigieg going to a derailment site? Commentary on a CNN interview with Biden
Even if buttigieg is fired for making sickening attacks on his family, or for disrespecting a community’s pain with failed attempts to exploitation as a political prop, nothing would make him lose credibility.
To political chatterers, every transportation-related issue has triggered a discussion of how this could hurt his ambitions in the future.
He told CNN that people need policy and performative work. “And to get to this level, you’ve got to be ready to serve up both.”
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has praised the cooperation he’s been getting from the Biden administration. No one can point to a clear failure on Buttigieg’s part around the train wreck, as House Oversight Chairman Rep. Jim Comer pointed out in his initial letter demanding answers from the secretary.
No previous Transportation secretary had gone to a derailment site, so when he made his analysis he didn’t think he would either. But he says when he finally did go, the experience was searing.
Technical information about the response was available to me. But I think it was important to hear and see how the community was responding, what they were worried about it just a different way that you can sense on paper,” Buttigieg said, talking about the sight of twisted metal and smell of chemicals in the air. “It just feels different.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/05/politics/pete-buttigieg-ohio-train-derailment/index.html
Secretary Buttigieg in East Palestine to help the EPA: He’s not going to leave, but I’ll get there Monday
The secretary visited East Palestine a day after former President Donald Trump went to the town, calling out President Joe Biden for not having made his own visit and slamming the administration’s response.
It was somewhat frustrating to see someone who did a lot try to gut rail safety regulation but the EPA, which is the number one thing standing between the community and a total loss of accountability for Norfolk Southern show up.
Buttigieg said any suggestion that he was pressured to leave East Palestine by Trump was bullshit. “We were already going to go.”
For now, he says he wants to leverage the attacks over the derailment into action that could otherwise take years to come through government bureaucracy.
There were no cable news segments about Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack when the price of eggs spiked in January. Few in Washington or beyond could pick up on the fact that the EPA was taking the lead in the response to the East Palestine train wreck, even though the agency had taken the lead on the controlled burn of some hazardous materials.
The outgoing Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said that he may have been an easy target because he ran for president, but that nobody else in the Cabinet attracts the same amount of attention. People always ask what Secretary Buttigieg will do next. What will Buttigieg do next? We have talked. He will be the Secretary of Transportation.
Buttigieg says what he’d rather be doing is trips like Monday’s: Opening the first new airport terminal in Kansas City since Vice President Spiro Agnew was there for a ribbon cutting – Buttigieg arrived late, courtesy of being stuck on his own delayed Southwest Airlines flight – celebrating the groundbreaking on a record-busting $4 billion electric vehicle battery plant in DeSoto, Kansas, and talking transportation programs with students at the University of Missouri.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/05/politics/pete-buttigieg-ohio-train-derailment/index.html
A Call to the CEOs of Large Airlines, and Why he’s Going to Pay for Cancellations? A Reply to Buttigieg
The world has a lot of politics that we see from time to time. Infrastructure is good for everyone, that’s the reality of it.
With DOT tracking a sizable increase in flights being canceled last summer, he called in the CEOs of the 10 largest airlines and pressed them on stress testing their schedule and improving customer service.
Instead of waiting the years it could have taken for new regulations to get through, he wrote the CEOs a letter. In two weeks, he told them, he was going to publish a chart of which airlines offered which compensation for cancellations – cover a meal? What about a hotel? Should the ticket be rebooked automatically? Green checks and red Xs would be displayed. He’d do interviews, more tweets like the ones breaking down the dollar value of bonus miles, to help people avoid getting ripped off.
Southwest and seven other airlines announced their own guarantees before he did. Two more have followed. He will be releasing a chart next week about which airlines have seating for families to be together. Already, American Airlines announced on Tuesday plans to institute a new policy.
It would have been worse for customers if those guarantees hadn’t been written already, Buttigieg said.
When the 17,000 Southwest flights were canceled over just 10 days, thanks to the combination of a winter storm and an outdated crew scheduling system, Buttigieg was hammered again. Republicans said he dodged the crisis. He wasn’t hitting the company with big enough fines, which was the complaint by the progressives. He was “in the hot seat,” or according to one chyron: “Mayor Pete Leaves Southwest Customers Stranded.”
Colin Allred, a Democrat from Texas who is an airline worker, said the group is attacking the secretary over bad decisions made by the airline.
Allred said that the Democrats underestimated the consequences of higher fines, which would have led to mass layoffs.
“Play it out, if he had decided to make this the biggest issue in the world, it would appear political, because it’s outside the scope of what we’re used to seeing secretaries of transportation do,” Allred said.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/05/politics/pete-buttigieg-ohio-train-derailment/index.html
A Conversation with Pete Buttigieg on Public Safety, Public Works, and Roadside Killings: An Overview of the Way Forward Transportation in Ohio
Buttigieg pointed out that the highest amount of fines in the history of DOT was achieved in 2022, before Southwest money was included.
There is a long list of things he says have remained top priorities despite the lack of public attention, like the pilot program for the data sharing between major retailers and trucking companies. Or his mediating a negotiation between cellphone companies eager to install 5G towers and the airlines worried those signals would interfere with old altimeters and make planes fall out of the sky.
Already, the DOT points to meetings Buttigieg had back in Washington with 12 unions calling for more attention to the lack of personal protective equipment for clean-up workers and the health problems they’ve been having, and a voluntary safety reporting system that all seven top railroad companies – including Norfolk Southern – are agreeing to at his urging.
Asked what he would hold him to account for, Buttigieg said that they had done everything they could to hold Norfolk Southern accountable and made major strides in the level of rail safety. Being in it for the long haul is required of all of those.
Being a lightning rod, Buttigieg knows, will make that harder. He pointed to an appearance he made last week at the National Association of Counties conference. The main topic he wanted to address was roadway deaths which kill 40,000 Americans per year, 100 per day, by his data.
The only attention he generated was a pile-on over the comment about how construction workers needed to come from neighborhoods in which they work.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/05/politics/pete-buttigieg-ohio-train-derailment/index.html
Sensitivity of the Kansas City airport to Buttigieg: a mayor’s first experiment and the fight for an Everyman
Quinton Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City, said he had two informal experiments about how people respond to Buttigieg – one when he posted on social media about the upcoming visit, one when he watched the interactions the secretary had at the airport opening ceremony.
The response online was huge: both excited like and vicious repetition of standard attacks like on those boots he wore in Ohio to take maternity leave after adopting twins in late 2021. At the opening ceremony of the airport, Lucas felt that Republicans and Democrats, business leaders and union workers were all connected to Buttigieg and want to talk with him.
“Attacking the president for not being an Everyman is darn near impossible, so I think there is a search from my friends on the right for someone to fill that role,” Lucas said. They are trying with Secretary Buttigieg, but it is not working.