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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

#121

Post by dylan604 »

colpabar wrote: post #9
dylan604 wrote: post #3

what kind of protections does bankruptcy afford Norfolk Southern or other corp shenanigans can they pull to avoid having to do anything?

They could always just not do it. The release says that if this happens, the gov will do it instead and "compel" NS to pay them triple the cost, but I don't really see that happening, given that they just "compelled" the rail workers union to not strike against them. I'm hopeful that they will just clean it up, but this is a massive corporation owned by hedge funds we're talking about. The rules don't apply to them.

I'm assuming this will be a future super fund type of site

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

#122

Post by joe_the_user »

Why isn't the EPA offering trailers outside of town to any worried residents?

News reports indicate that people seem to be being poisoned in their homes and staying because they have no other place to go.

Edit: Jeesh, of course I mean "why aren't the Feds overall offering trailers". I get the impression the EPA is currently organizing the remediation but that's a side-issue, darn it.

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

#123

Post by Blackthorn »

xadhominemx wrote: post #70
hammock wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the combustion products are relatively benign Who told you that? Phosgene and dioxins are "relatively benign"? Dioxins might more properly be called forever chemicals, and will contaminate the soil and water of five states for decades. I understand they were trying to avoid a bleve. The solution they chose was not based principally on minimizing citizen harm though

Phosgene also has very low environmental persistence. I think the actual amount of dioxin created from combustion of vinyl chloride monomer at atmospheric pressure is very low. In any event, both were dispersed into the atmosphere at concentrations that pose(d) very little danger to people outside of the temporary evacuation zone.

My friend from East Palestine took a video of the water in a creek that runs outside his house. The water is rainbow like an oil spill. This was yesterday. Whatever they combusted and dispersed, it's very much still there and I sure wouldn't want to be drinking that water.

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

#124

Post by treeman79 »

xadhominemx wrote: post #34
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)

They burned off the vinyl chloride because the combustion products are relatively benign, it was much safer to remediation personnel to ignite the chemicals in a controlled burn vs having them work around flammable chemicals for weeks, vinyl chloride is quite volatile and acute exposure to high concentrations of vinyl chloride vapor is dangerous, and they wanted to get everyone back in their homes (and yes, get the r…

https://youtu.be/L1I6eVP8QQk

Rivers are filled with something that’s heavier than water. Fish are all dying.

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

#125

Post by tristor »

pookha wrote: post #27

Apparently there are something like 1K derailments a year in the US? Had no idea...Seems pretty high. https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/02/17/tra...

>Seems pretty high.

This is a similar discrepancy between the technical meaning of language as used in statistics, and the popular usage of language as the layperson understands it when they read it in the news as happens with the term "mass shooting".

When a layperson hears "train derailment" they think of what happened in Ohio. When a layperson hears "mass shooting" they think of what happened at Uvalde.

In actuality, as far as the statistics are concerned, a train derailment is ANY time a train has a wheel that goes off of the track which is not part of a planned maintenance. These are rarely catastrophic.

In actuality, as far as the statistics are concerned, a mass shooting is ANY time a shooting has more than 3 victims, regardless of location. 99% of these are gang shootings in the inner city, in the 1.3% of US counties that make up 90% of all violent crimes. Arguably, these are always catastrophic, but the cause/solution/surrounding issues are vastly different than the popular topic.

As usual, technical language used in the media is misconstrued and misunderstood by non-technical reporters and lay audiences.

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

#126

Post by [deleted] »

rootusrootus wrote: post #68
fh973 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed... the EU has a similar network size and there it's less than 100: https://twitter.com/HerrNaumann/status/1626342809438502918 Edit: less than 100 (Entgleisungen).

How much less than 1000 (my German is pretty rusty)? e.g. 900 vs 1100 is not really statistically different, and doesn't suggest a systemic problem. Especially given the heavy focus on shipping for the US rail network versus passengers in the EU. Tracks in the US that are used for passengers are maintained better than shipping-only tracks, for sure.

[deleted]

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

#127

Post by max937 »

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?

I feel the same way. Are the people who stay in East Palestine gonna develop serious health issues or not?

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

#128

Post by Blackthorn »

treeman79 wrote: post #124
xadhominemx wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They burned off the vinyl chloride because the combustion products are relatively benign, it was much safer to remediation personnel to ignite the chemicals in a controlled burn vs having them work around flammable chemicals for weeks, vinyl chloride is quite volatile and acute exposure to high concentrations of vinyl chloride vapor is dangerous, and they wanted to get everyone back in their homes (and yes, get the r…

https://youtu.be/L1I6eVP8QQk Rivers are filled with something that’s heavier than water. Fish are all dying.

Same from a video a friend took yesterday, but he didn't even need to disturb the creek, it just had the sheen on top right there.

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

#129

Post by ketzo »

mrguyorama wrote: post #96
fullstop wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand a lot of those are in the rail yards and not at full speed. Here is a poorly made website which can generate reports on this: https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/que...

Goddamn I love government websites. A simple form, with clear and common styling, with no place I have to put my email, with no popup about joining a damn mailing list, with no ads, and when I click the submit button, the response is instant and a clear table that doesn't do anything stupid with javascript. Every time the government spends my tax dollars developing a web page with a form that generates reports, an an…

I am also obsessed with the header image that does not even try to scale with width. It just stretches. Awesome

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

#130

Post by anonuser123456 »

dylan604 wrote: post #3

what kind of protections does bankruptcy afford Norfolk Southern or other corp shenanigans can they pull to avoid having to do anything?

Bankruptcy protects the corporate entity, but not shareholder equity.

That is, shareholders can lose all equity claims. But that doesn’t mean destroying the business. It can be sold off to new shareholders and then sale proceeds used to make creditors whole.

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