EAST PALESTINE, Ohio (WKBN) — Crews removed the last pile of dirt and rocks as part of its cleanup efforts at the site of the East Palestine train derailment.
Excavation was completed Sunday evening.
Norfolk Southern’s Bob Scoble has been in charge of this operation since the beginning. He said the cleanup will now move into its next phase.
“We’re gonna sample the site itself again, looking for any trace amounts of contamination that may have been left behind that we missed,” said Scoble.
As soil testing takes place over the next five or six months, crews will start filling in areas and replacing contaminated materials with clean stone and dirt.
Crews will also start inspecting the creeks from Negley up to East Palestine, looking for contamination.
Since the clean-up began, more than 175,000 tons of soil have been removed and hauled away from underneath and beside the two sets of track running through town, forcing the shutdown of a portion of East Taggart Street for months.
“We’ve been averaging anywhere between 30 and 100 trucks a day coming through Taggart [Street] here,” Scoble said.
Although Taggart did reopen fully last week, it has been slow-going through this area. Crews say now that the excavation work has finished, local traffic should start getting back to normal.
