SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I’m Scott Detrow in East Palestine, Ohio, and I’m standing along the railroad tracks where a year ago, a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed. Thirty-eight cars derailed, and 20 of those cars were carrying hazardous materials. One of those materials was vinyl chloride. This led to big environmental problems. And in the days after the crash, there was this big plume of smoke when they decided to vent off and burn off the vinyl chloride.
This became a national story. And it became really a spotlight on something that we’re seeing happening just about every other day across the country and that’s freight rail derailments. And this is still an active construction site. Norfolk Southern has been doing cleanup just about ever since.
CHRISTOPHER HUNSICKER: We’ve got our two sets of tracks, but if you look on down the tracks here, there’s a white sign on the left of the north track. That’s actually the sign for the PA border. So that’s about where we are in reference to Pennsylvania and Ohio.
DETROW: This is Christopher Hunsicker, Norfolk Southern’s regional manager of environmental operations. He’s giving us a tour of the cleanup site that he’s been in charge of since the immediate wake of the derailment.
HUNSICKER: So when we got here right then, you know, there were cars on fire. You know, that was still the immediate response. It was getting that situation under control, controlling that hazard.
DETROW: Since then, Norfolk Southern has spent more than $800 million on cleanup, clearing away the railcars, assessing the environmental damage, removing all the dirt doused with toxic chemicals and now the final phase, replacing what it dug up with clean soil and limestone, all of this under the close scrutiny of state and federal environmental officials.
Generally, what did you do with the contaminated soil that you dug out?
HUNSICKER: So all the contaminated soil has been shipped off…
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