LORDSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) — Wastewater from the East Palestine train derailment remediation efforts is being offloaded to rail cars at a Norfolk Southern railyard in Lordstown, and village Mayor Arno Hill shared some thoughts on it.
The Lordstown railyard is now serving as a transfer point for contaminated wastewater coming from the derailment site.
“We can’t stop this now,” Hill says. “You know, it would be nice if we didn’t have to get involved.”
In Tuesday’s East Palestine update from the governor’s office, First News learned that waste from East Palestine — which is mostly water — would now be transferred from semitrucks to rail cars in Lordstown instead of going directly to licensed hazardous waste disposal facilities.
The change was approved by both federal and state authorities handling the derailment response.
“Our main goal is to make sure that our residents, our community, is safe,” Arno says.
The governor’s office says the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency will be overseeing the transfer of the wastewater to the rail cars.
“I don’t know how many truckloads are coming in,” Arno says. “If the EPA does their job, we shouldn’t have any issues here in Lordstown.”
Hill says he was told that the water will be taken to a deep injection well in Texas.
