Norfolk Southern offers up-close view of cleanup work at East Palestine derailment site

Chris Hunsicker has done environmental cleanup work for 30 years, but he said he’s never been involved in a project as extensive as the one that began after the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine in early February.

“This is a very unique event and a very significant event,” Hunsicker, Norfolk Southern’s regional manager of environmental operations, said as a long-arm excavator shoveled soil at the derailment site.

“This is the biggest one I’ve ever been involved with, and it’s not just about my experience. (Those involved in the project have) probably hundreds of years of experience,” he added.

Thirty-eight Norfolk Southern rail cars, including 11 containing hazardous materials, derailed Feb. 3. A fire at the site burned for days, and authorities ordered people living nearby to evacuate the area.

On Friday, Norfolk Southern took another step forward in the cleanup, inviting members of the news media to the site for the first time to get an up-close look at the remediation efforts.

Hunsicker said the company has removed, tested and shipped out more than 25,000 tons of solid material and more than 12 million gallons of liquids in its remediation efforts along what it calls track No. 1, where the derailment occurred. Once rail traffic shifts back to track No. 1, remediation work will begin on the soil under and around track No. 2, Hunsicker said.

The company also is tackling remediation of Sulfur Run and some of its unnamed tributaries, which run along the train tracks in parts of East Palestine. Nobody wants the chemicals in the soil going downstream, Hunsicker said.

“Today is a big milestone for us,” he told reporters at the site, where a line of Norfolk Southern-led rail cars noisily passed by. “We’ve been working … with the regulators to define areas that were affected and come up with a plan on how we’re going to address them and manage those materials.”

A big part of the work is testing the soil for contaminants such as vinyl chloride and other hazardous chemicals, which some of the derailed cars were carrying, Hunsicker said. The concentration levels of contaminants in the soil also dictates how — and where — they can be disposed or stored.

The site no longer resembles the fiery hellscape that was captured in dramatic photos taken by area residents and the news media in the days after the derailment. The plumes of smoke from the chemical burn, which forced hundreds of people to evacuate, are long gone. The site doesn’t have even a hint of the acrid, chemical-lined smell that permeated East Palestine for weeks after the derailment and controlled burn.

Also long gone are the rail cars that derailed. Some got cleared to return to Norfolk Southern’s fleet, while others were scrapped.

“Every car is gone, long gone,” Norfolk Southern spokesman Connor Spielmaker said. “Our environmental responsibility and obligations, we’re really focused. This is absolutely incredible, the amount of work that’s been done here.”

Hunsicker said the process, despite the roadblocks on East Taggart Street near the remediation site, has been very public.

“We’re in town every day, all the time,” he said. “We really want the community’s questions to come to us.”

“We’re trying to do the best we can out here,” Hunsicker said. “But there may be something we don’t see or someone might have a concern that’s different from ours. And we want to address that.”