East Palestine derailment: another symptom of deregulation, corporate greed

BY ANTHONY ORRICO Staff Writer

Residents of East Palestine, Ohio are still searching for answers this week after a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in the town of fewer than 5,000 residents. The 50-car train operated by Norfolk Southern Railway Company detached from its tracks late in the evening on Feb. 3rd.

Residents within a certain radius of the crash site were ordered to evacuate the area three days later while Norfolk Southern executed a controlled release of hazardous chemicals.

Once the evacuation order was lifted on Feb. 9th, residents returned to find the area still had a chemical smell and many complained of headaches and nausea.

Over 43,000 animals were killed by the chemicals, according to local officials and some residents came back to find livestock and pets either sick or dead. The EPA has been on the ground in East Palestine testing water and soil samples to determine if chemicals have been leached into the water supply.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said in a statement last week that the EPA had tested the five wells that supply water to the village and found that the water was safe to drink. The Environmental Protection Agency ordered Norfolk Southern on Tuesday to clean up the contaminated areas.

“Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning up the mess that they created, and the trauma that they inflicted on this community,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a press conference Tuesday.

Regan went on to say that if Norfolk fails to meet any of the obligations laid out by the agency, the EPA will do the work themselves and force Norfolk to pay triple the cost. The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report on Thursday citing the cause of the derailment to be overheated bearings, but they will continue to investigate.

The response from the media and government seemed lacking at first as all efforts seemed to be aimed at protecting the public image of Norfolk Southern. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has faced harsh criticism after not visiting the crash site until three weeks after the incident.

DeWine said in a Feb. 14 press conference, “Look, the president called me and said, ‘Anything you need.’ I have not called him back after that conversation.”

President Biden said to White House reporters on Friday that he has no plans to visit the site.

This lack of a prompt response from the federal government does not inspire hope in East Palestine residents that they will be made whole again. All the while, these residents are being told that the area is safe to return to and the water is safe to drink. Regardless of what the EPA, Ohio officials or federal government say, you can’t just release toxic chemicals into the air and expect everything to be safe a handful of weeks later.

Vinyl chloride is a carcinogen, according to the National Cancer Institute and is listed as a contributor to several types of rare cancers. These include brain, liver, and lung cancer, as well as lymphoma and leukemia.

Videos from residents circulating online have shown their livestock sick, rivers contaminated, and pets dying.

Disasters like this are preventable. The whole purpose of the regulator is to regulate the practices of companies and people who can’t be trusted to regulate themselves. James Madison once wrote in chapter 51 of “The Federalist Papers,” sentence that was reworded “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

According to officials, at least one of the train cars containing vinyl chloride had malfunctioning safety valves. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has sent out an advisory in response to this information, recommending that freight rail companies check the perfor- mance of safety valves. However, this verification of safety valve function should have already been a required practice, and it has yet to be mandated.

In addition to a lack of regulation, corruption between corporations and politicians is also at issue. Norfolk Southern’s political action committee spent $1.3 million in campaign contributions during the 2020 election cycle according to data from Opensecrets.org Spell out organization, not the website and add a hyperlink .

The nature of corporate America is to make as much money as possible for their shareholders while disregarding anyone their business practices may affect. As long as politicians can be bought, disasters like this will continue to happen.

Why does each quarter’s profit have to be better than the last? How many lives does corporate America have to destroy or end before everyone wakes up and sees the writing on the wall? Corporations don’t care about the American people. They don’t care who or what they have to destroy to meet their profit goals.

Wall Street knew what they were doing when they crashed the global economy in 2008. Exxon knew that burning fossil fuels was damaging the planet and they lied about it for decades. The sad part is that decades ago, the American people let the corporations walk right into Washington and take it over.

Deregulation, the free market and the sick culture of greed are why a town of fewer than 5,000 people got poisoned. And why this will not be the last our society must have this conversation. This won’t be the last time a preventable tragedy like this toxic train derailment happens. We need to have a conversation about why.