Norfolk Southern CEO: 'I understand my responsibility' in Ohio derailment cleanup

Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw confidently chugged a glass of East Palestine, Ohio, tap water in front of a group of reporters Thursday as he promised to clean the site of a fiery train derailment and invest in local rebuilding efforts.

“We’ve been not only engaged here ever since the derailment, about five, six weeks ago — as soon as that happened, I pulled my team together and I said, ‘We’re going to do more than less for the folks in this community and in the surrounding area,’” Shaw said Thursday afternoon in a discussion at an East Palestine church.

“I’m sorry for what happened. I understand my responsibility and I take that personally. I understand that my role of guiding Norfolk Southern to do the right thing is really important here,” he added.

A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday is the first of what could be many legal actions and lawsuits connected to the Feb. 3 derailment and the environmental maelstrom that followed. The lawsuit seeks to force the company to pay for groundwater and soil monitoring in the years to come and economic losses in the village of East Palestine and surrounding areas, said Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

“The fallout from this highly preventable accident is going to reverberate throughout Ohio for many years to come,” Yost had said.

No one was injured in the Feb. 3 derailment on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, but half of East Palestine’s 4,700 residents had to evacuate for days when responders intentionally burned toxic chemicals in some of the derailed cars to prevent an uncontrolled explosion, leaving residents with lingering health concerns.

Government officials say tests over the past month haven’t found dangerous levels of chemicals in the air or water in the area. Shaw on Thursday underlined his belief in that science — and in the Environmental Protection Agency. He ended the media roundtable by drinking a glass of East Palestine’s tap water.

“I said at the very beginning, ‘I want to do this and do things right today, tomorrow, a year from now, five years from now, and 10 years from now,’” Shaw said.

The rail giant’s top executive looked anything but executive Thursday afternoon, foregoing a tie and instead sporting a black vest, a nametag and an orange ‘Go Bulldogs’ bracelet that promoted East Palestine school sports. Shaw pointed out that Norfolk Southern has donated $100,000 each to the town’s high school, middle school and elementary school.

Shaw said Norfolk Southern is setting up funds to help deal with property values, health care and water monitoring — which it says are the three biggest concerns it has heard from East Palestine residents.

Questioned about people who spend time in East Palestine who say they have experienced rashes, headaches and watery eyes, Shaw defended the EPA’s findings that air and water do not appear to be contaminated.

“There’s hundreds of tests, millions of data points, that say the water is clean,” Shaw said. “I’m not a doctor by any stretch, but I am listening.”

Shaw also stressed he was “confident Pennsylvania will be part” of the three long-term funds. Shaw cited a $7.5 million contribution to Pennsylvania recently touted by Gov. Josh Shapiro as proof that the company is engaged with citizens on the border, about 200 households of whom also relocated during the controlled chemical burn.

Shaw also corrected local reporters on the minute details of the derailment, at one point stressing the EPA did not order Norfolk Southern to remove soil from beneath its train tracks.

“We reacted very, very quickly,” Shaw said. “It really bothered (residents) that we weren’t taking up the soil under the tracks. And we listened … I got feedback and I adjusted.”

Shaw, who works at Norfolk Southern’s company headquarters in Atlanta, went a step further, saying he would have no qualms about living in East Palestine after the fiery crash.

“All the tests are coming back and saying, ‘It’s safe.’”