EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — On this first Friday of February, a sense of normalcy has returned to East Palestine.
Bonnie Davis, though, has long-term concerns about health and short-term concerns about this happening again.
“Still, we’ve heard of derailments like in Leetonia or Middletown or like other little places; it’s just a real quick, ‘Oh, and there was a train derailment in this little town in Ohio,’” she said.
To put her at ease, she’d like to see Congress move on the Railway Safety Act, a bipartisan measure introduced last March by Ohio Senators Sherrod Brown and JD Vance that had great steam in the beginning but has stalled in recent months.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg tells News 5 that’s been frustrating.
“It makes no sense that we could be a year out and have Congress still sitting on its hands,” Buttigieg said. “We're urging Congress to not allow America to get to the one-year mark since the Norfolk Southern derailment and still be waiting on this bi-partisan Railway Safety Act.”
Drawing attention to this renewed push is what brought JD Vance to East Palestine on this day. With all 51 Democrats in the Senate expected to vote for it, Vance needs nine Republicans to join him to avoid a filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer reportedly won’t bring it to the floor for a vote without them. Vance told us what he told Schumer: he’ll have them.
“You never know until you actually have the votes,” Vance said. “I have received private assurances from Republican colleagues that we have the votes to pass the Rail Safety Act. I think that, in some ways, Schumer can’t let caution enable him to avoid bringing a good piece of legislation to the floor. Sometimes, these things are hard, and sometimes, the most important thing is to apply pressure, force people to vote on it and get it over the hill.
“I think we’ll get more than 60 votes on the Railway Safety bill, but it does require Schumer to bring it to the floor,” he said. "We need two days of floor time in the United States Senate to get the Railway Safety bill. That means you have to amend it, you have to do the various procedural roadblocks, get over those procedural roadblocks. The idea that the majority leader can't give us two days of floor time when we don't even vote on same days is absurd."
President Biden’s visit here later this month will help in shoring up the Democratic votes, said co-sponsor Sherrod Brown. But he offered the administration this advice: this is a trip that is more about hearing than seeing.
“He needs to ask questions and listen to people,” said Brown. “He needs to hear from people about what's happening with people moving back; he needs to hear about what the company is going to do in water and soil testing regularly until we're absolutely sure that everything's back to normal. He needs to hear about long-term health effects and Norfolk Southern paying for that testing of water wells and healthcare and all of the things that we still don't know the answers to.”
Though the spotlight has faded in East Palestine, Buttigieg hopes it remains in the Columbiana County community for a little while longer until these goals are achieved.
“Look I'm probably the last person that you would imagine wants to be keeping East Palestine in the headlines, but I think it's important because it's important to show that we're not forgetting this community and it's equally important to show how important it is to have action,” he said.
