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EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

epa.gov

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Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#111

Post by QuercusMax »

thrashh wrote: post #10
hanniabu wrote: post #4

Based on the fact that there's thousands of superfund sites that are decades old, this probably won't be cleaned up any time soon

Well based on the fact that - we’ve cleaned up 25% of sites in a system that only started in the 80s - the infrastructure bill in 2021 bringing back the superfund cleanup tax on chemical companies that expired in 1995 — at double the rate - and Congress also authorizing an extra $3.5 billion 2 years ago just for cleanups I think it’s too early to be so cynical

News flash: the 1980s were 40 years ago. At this rate we'll all be dead before they're done.

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#112

Post by thearn4 »

Rimintil wrote: post #107
thearn4 wrote: post #98

I'm finding it difficult to find objective assessments of the impact of what has happened in East Palestine. It seems like there are interests in dismissing the impacts entirely, but there are others that seems to want to overstate the impacts significantly. Does anyone else feel this way?

Other than introducing FUD about the cleanup costs, why would you believe there is overstatement on the impact of the disaster? What metric has you doubting the impact statement? What are your qualifications to make this assessment?

I'm thinking about what I've read on social media (twitter, reddit, etc) about the event. The posts getting the most engagement/traction are convinced this is larger than Chernobyl. However, relevant authorities do not seem to agree with this.

But I have no environmental sciences credentials to speak of.

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#113

Post by jcranmer »

kevviiinn wrote: post #87
jcranmer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering what happened the last time the railroads were nationalized, I doubt that's a very good idea.

Which was what, exactly?

Essentially, the US government undermaintained the railroads (the modern public transit scourge of "deferred maintenance" practiced a hundred years ago). It ran the railroads with a more or less single-minded mindset to supplying war goods, and after the war was over, kept a heavy touch on the railroads which made them unable to adapt to the increasing competition from heavily-subsidized highways and airlines, which combined with the headache of "deferred maintenance" meant that railroads suffered from about 1920 to 1980. (It wasn't until the failure of Penn Central that things really started getting better.)

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#114

Post by bombcar »

naasking wrote: post #79
hammock wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are thousands of derailments every year. The bigger problem is not the derailment but the fact that they released and burned off the vinyl chloride in order to expeditiously clear the tracks and get them running again, at great health and environmental cost to the local community and even several states in the windshed to the northeast (PA, NY, VT)

> There are thousands of derailments every year. The bigger problem is not the derailment [...] I think that's a problem worth discussing as well. Obama passed legislation to upgrade trains braking systems to make them a lot safer, which was then weakened by lobbying, which was then repealed by Trump, then the rail companies spent billions in stock buybacks and tried to tighten the screws on their labour force even f…

The way to put the screws to the rail companies isn’t to regulate better brakes - just have the NTSB have a policy of shutting down any line that has a derailment for months or longer. The companies will solve it themselves.

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#115

Post by bombcar »

mlindner wrote: post #94
fr0sty wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/why-train-derailm... Most derailments are in train yards. Few cause injuries, fewer cause deaths, and only a handful involve hazardous substances. I don't say that to downplay the mess in OH/PA, but just to make sure the base-rate is understood. And if you want to compare to europe it looks like US freight rail volume is at least 6x as large. Also no idea if/how they count "…

A couple months ago I watched an amateur train nerd on youtube cover a derailment that dumped a load of bitumin/tar into a river and destroyed a bridge. This kind of thing happens pretty commonly. No national news covered it, only a couple of local news stations, at least from what I could find on youtube/googling. It's confusing to me why this specific incident got so much attention.

Probably because it was literally visible from space (one it was lit on fire).

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#116

Post by throwanem »

mlindner wrote: post #92
hammock wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand corrected. They did a great job and no one in East Palestine is sick

Correct. There is no one in East Palestine who got sick from this. There's many derailments throughout the country and chemical spills of other sorts have happened many times.

> There is no one in East Palestine who got sick from this.

You're saying this a decade or two early, don't you think? Cancer rates are a trailing indicator.

I'm not going to try to address the normalization of deviance implicit in the rest of your comment, because what would be the point?

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#117

Post by SkyPuncher »

hammock wrote: post #30
thechao wrote: post #26

Has anyone seen a good analysis on what went wrong? I found a USAToday article with a partial fragment saying that one of the wheels had a failed bearing, and this was the proximal cause of the derailment. It seems to me that (as pointed out in the article) the mean-time-to-failure increases with the length of the train; perhaps nonlinearly? I think the failure rate of bearings is proportional to the length of the tr…

There are thousands of derailments every year. The bigger problem is not the derailment but the fact that they released and burned off the vinyl chloride in order to expeditiously clear the tracks and get them running again, at great health and environmental cost to the local community and even several states in the windshed to the northeast (PA, NY, VT)

> fact that they released and burned off the vinyl chloride in order to expeditiously clear the tracks and get them running again

I was under the impression that there was risk of a Boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion which would have been even more catastrophic than the "controlled" release and burn off.

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#118

Post by Ar-Curunir »

mlindner wrote: post #94
fr0sty wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/why-train-derailm... Most derailments are in train yards. Few cause injuries, fewer cause deaths, and only a handful involve hazardous substances. I don't say that to downplay the mess in OH/PA, but just to make sure the base-rate is understood. And if you want to compare to europe it looks like US freight rail volume is at least 6x as large. Also no idea if/how they count "…

A couple months ago I watched an amateur train nerd on youtube cover a derailment that dumped a load of bitumin/tar into a river and destroyed a bridge. This kind of thing happens pretty commonly. No national news covered it, only a couple of local news stations, at least from what I could find on youtube/googling. It's confusing to me why this specific incident got so much attention.

Maybe it should be confusing to you why more such harmful derailings are not getting as much attention

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#119

Post by the_optimist »

piva00 wrote: post #89
the_optimist wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this idea were completely backwards, there would be no way to tell the difference from what you’ve suggested. In fact, there isn’t even a basic counterexample that holds without predominant confounding factors. In other words, unfortunately, this is theory is a non-falsifiable conspiracy theory. Edit: It is rather validating when poking a pet theory produces a negative yet non-substantive response. Sure, go on bel…

Jeremy Hunt co-authored this in 2005 [0]. Look at the bits about denationalising the NHS. I'd like to see your rebuttal to this book, genuinely [1]. Edit: also this op-ed contains some more examples of the process going on [2]. Please, refrain from name-calling and instead point exactly where I'm wrong on what you so called a "conspiracy theory". It's a baseless comment and you haven't provided me anything to look fu…

Merely pointing out that a theory for attacking the system exists is not equivalent to attacking the system; you have to assume malicious intent. There is no way to differentiate merely scarce resources from supposedly adversarial depletion. This market is fixed. Abject failure is indistinguishable from success, in any form. You are merely saying, “I assume you are malicious,” which is a premise—not a conclusion. The same phenomenon exists with the Piven-Cloward opponents. There’s no ‘name-calling’ here. The point stands on itself.

Re: EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment

#120

Post by crazygringo »

jokowueu wrote: post #109
hammock wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand corrected. They did a great job and no one in East Palestine is sick

All of that smoke and no one got sick ? Hard to believe

They evacuated people first.
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