EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — The Environmental Protection Agency announced it detected chemicals from the East Palestine train derailment in the Ohio River.
Although it's unclear what future impacts the chemicals will have on communities, soil and water around the crash site, communities over 250 miles away, in the Greater Cincinnati region, have much less to fear.
Tiffani Kavalec, chief of the Ohio EPA, said during a state press conference Tuesday afternoon that while the chemicals did flow into the Ohio River, it shouldn't affect drinking water along the river.
"The spill did flow to the Ohio River, but the Ohio River is very large and it's a water body that's able to dilute the pollutants pretty quickly," said Kavalec.
The contaminants are moving down the Ohio River at a rate of one mile an hour, Kavalec said, which gives water treatment officials plenty of notice to close intakes to the river ahead of time to stop the water from entering the holding containers that house drinking water.
"The farther it heads down the Ohio, the much less risk that it is and we haven't seen a risk, even at the closest points to East Palestine," said Kavalec. "So, we would not envision anything from this point forward impacting any of the future drinking supplies."
You can watch the full press conference here:
That, combined with normal water filtration measures, should prevent any of the chemicals from making their way into drinking water consumed by people in the Greater Cincinnati region. If it does, Greater Cincinnati Water Works will spot it.
"We do this kind of testing every day, several times a day," said Jeff Swertfeger, superintendent of water quality and treatment at GCWW.
Mary Carol Wagner, water quality manager with the Northern Kentucky Water District told LINKnky that residents in Northern Kentucky don't need to worry about contaminated water.
“Water is fine to drink,” Wagner told LINKnky on Tuesday. “We are keeping a close eye on it and we are definitely concerned about the safety of our water – that is our daily job to do.”
She explained that Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky get water from the Ohio River through water intake valves downstream. That water is pumped into two Northern Kentucky reservoirs that hold the water until it's needed — and the intakes can be shut off to halt contaminated water from making it in.
“In case of incidents like this, we can actually shut our intakes from pulling water in from the Ohio into the reservoirs and feed off of the reservoirs and let the contaminated water flow downstream,” Wagner said.
The intakes haven't yet been shut off, because no contamination has been detected so far. Wagner said water contaminated with butyl acrylate likely won't make it into where Northern Kentucky pulls water from the Ohio River for roughly another week; once that happens, the intake valves will be closed, leaving clean water in the reservoirs for use and blocking out the contaminated water.
“Even with the levels that are in the Ohio River right now, we do have health guidances on it and it is well below those health guidances,” Wagner said.
On Feb. 10, the U.S. EPA issued a letter to Norfolk Southern, the company that owns the derailed train, notifying it that the agency believed the company could be found liable for damages and cleanup associated with the incident. In that letter, the EPA said 150 cars on the train derailed — 20 of which were carrying hazardous materials.
The materials "are known to have been and continue to be released into the air, surface soils and surface waters," the EPA wrote on January 10.
Those materials are:
- Vinyl chloride
- Butyl acrylate
- Ethylhexyl acrylate
- Ethylene glycol monobutyl ether
- Isobutylene
"Materials released during the incident were observed and detected in samples from Sulphur Run, Leslie Run, Bull Creek, North Fork Little Beaver Creek, Little Beaver Creek and the Ohio River," wrote the EPA in the letter to Norfolk Southern.
On Feb. 13, the EPA said it was monitoring and screening air quality in communities in and around East Palestine. Re-entry air screenings showed that there were no detections of vinyl chloride or hydrogen chloride in the 291 homes screened as of the update, including local schools and libraries.
State officials had no idea the train that derailed carried hazardous chemicals before it crashed, Governor Mike DeWine said during a press conference Tuesday afternoon. He said under current law, Norfolk Southern wasn't required to notify states when trains are transporting hazardous chemicals if the cars carrying such substances don't make up enough cars in the train.
"This is absurd and we need to look at this and Congress needs to take a look at how these things are handled," said DeWine.
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