EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — The charred train cars and tracks from the fiery derailment in East Palestine are long gone, but Norfolk Southern has left a big footprint on the village.
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The railroad spent tens of millions on cleanup, restoration and safety.
News 5 Investigators got a chance to see firsthand the restoration work at the site on E. Taggart Street. Norfolk Southern is trucking in rock from a quarry. They want 100 loads a day.
What was a disaster site is now a construction zone.
“This is the start of the restoration phase,” said Norfolk Southern Regional Manager Environmental Operations Chris Hunsicker.
Rocks by the truckload are being brought and dumped in a massive hole.
"If you bring me back here, and I was here right after it happened, the landmarks of where the incident happened are gone,” Hunsicker said.
Hunsicker oversees environmental operations for the railroad.
The railroad announced last October that the last of the contaminated dirt was removed.
“We’ve done our digging and we’ve got confirmation that we’ve reached clean levels,” Hunsicker said.
But not all is said and done. Sampling and testing will run through April.
“That’s kind of our double-check," Hunsicker said.
News 5 asked Hunsicker what they would be looking for beyond what was on the train.
"Really, it’s just making sure. Was there any other component that you know is part of combustion that happened during the fire, something like that that might have been missed,” Hunsicker said. But, he added, the company stands by their work.
“With the investigation, the soil removal we’ve done on here, we feel very confident we’ve got it all,” Hunsicker said.
But what about the creeks?
People in the village and surrounding communities have been critical of a chemical smell and a sheen.
"My biggest thing is they tell you one thing — everything's safe everything's fine — but we're seeing another thing,” said one resident last summer.
Last October, the federal EPA ordered Norfolk Southern to do more clean-up and sheen investigations.
Hunsicker said they’re waiting for approval on a proposed plan.
"We’ve seen sheens in the creek in the streams, and we’ve been doing that investigation to figure out, you know, what they’re associated with,” Hunsicker said.
News 5 Investigators surveyed people right after the derailment and at the six-month mark about the Norfolk Southern response.
The community’s dissatisfaction with the response softened slightly over time.
"I think they're trying. It's a bigger job than what they're looking at,” said one resident.
"I think they're falling short,” another resident said.
Norfolk Southern has pumped more than $100 million into the village — park renovations and a regional safety training center at $25 million a piece. The railroad also sampled more than 1,200 private wells.
From a safe distance, our camera captured new technology on the rails.
It’s Norfolk Southern’s digital train inspection portal, complete with stadium lights, high-definition cameras, and sensors.
The portal stands about twenty minutes west of East Palestine in Leetonia.
The train inspection portal takes thousands of pictures to look for anomalies but also tracks the speed of trains.
The railroad hasn’t said how much it cost, but it’s the first one ever built by Norfolk Southern. It came online last October.
A railroad spokesman says it’s not a replacement for hot box detectors but an additional layer of inspection.
More than a dozen will be installed by the end of the year, specifically in high-traffic areas.
“We’ve come a long way we still have a lot of work to do remaining here to make sure we get everything right,” Hunsicker said.
News 5 Investigators asked Hunsicker if he would feel safe with his family living there, if this was his home.
“I would absolutely feel safe to be here,” Hunsicker said.
Norfolk Southern also built a water treatment facility.
It’s used to treat hazardous waste water, which gets shipped out for disposal.
The railroad says once they can show the water flowing off the site is clean, the treatment facility will be decommissioned.
