EPA orders Norfolk Southern to clean up their mess in OH, or pay EPA triple to do it – National & International News – WED 22Feb2023

EPA orders Norfolk Southern to clean up their mess in OH, or pay EPA triple to do it.

Massive storms bring brutal cold, heavy snow to some states, record heat to others.

Mysterious metal sphere washes up on Japanese beach.

NATIONAL NEWS

EPA orders Norfolk Southern to clean up their mess in OH, or pay EPA triple to do it

In remarks yesterday, Environmental Protection Agency head Michael Regan said the agency would compel the Norfolk Southern rail company to clean up its mess in East Palestine, OH, following the Feb. 3 trail derailment. Regan said that Norfolk Southern had to produce a plan for approval by the EPA and submit to agency monitoring to ensure each step was carried out correctly. If Norfolk Southern fails at any point to meet EPA standards, the EPA will take over and send Norfolk Southern the bill, Regan said. Reimbursing the EPA for the clean-up would cost Norfolk Southern three times as much.

Regan’s announcement came after residents and local officials in Ohio and Pennsylvania raised concerns that Norfolk Southern wasn’t doing enough to clean up the site. For example, Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw had failed to address the problem of cleaning up contaminated soil underneath the tracks. DeWine said the company needed to take up the tracks, remove the soil, and replace the tracks. On Feb. 8, just five days after the disaster, the company resumed running freight over those tracks. This is potentially stirring up more contaminated dust into the air.

Penn. Gov. issues criminal referral over disaster.

The East Palestine disaster took place just a few hundred yards from the Pennsylvania border. Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has been blunt in his condemnation of Norfolk Southern, saying the company’s “corporate greed, incompetence and lack of care for our residents is absolutely unacceptable to me”. Gov. Shapiro has issued a criminal referral to his state attorney general’s office to examine whether there was any criminal violation by Norfolk Southern related to the disaster.

In an NPR interview, Gov. Shapiro said, “what I’ve experienced with [Norfolk Southern] since the derailment is just a level of arrogance and incompetence that has contributed to this disaster that people in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania are now dealing with”.

In the hours following the derailment, Shapiro says Norfolk Southern refused to work with “unified command,” a joint disaster-response task force with Ohio and Pennsylvania response teams. He also says Norfolk-Southern presented “conflicting” modeling data and refused to present alternatives to the controlled burn strategy, which many say has exacerbated the environmental impact. 

Shapiro has said that Norfolk Southern’s response prioritized getting their trains moving again at the expense of safety and environmental impact mitigation

Massive storms bring brutal cold and snow to some states, record heat to others

States from coast to coast are in for bitter cold and heavy snow for the next several days. Even in places that are used to snow like Minnesota, officials are warning residents to stay put as much as possible. According to FlightAware there have already been over 1500 flight cancelations today due to the severe weather.

Memories of the dozens dead in historic blizzards in Buffalo, NY, and elsewhere in the Northeast are still fresh in everyone’s minds. Many fear that similar disasters could play out all over the country in the coming days. Residents in most areas have stocked up on supplies to hunker down in the event they lose power. Some communities in California have already lost power.

Meanwhile, in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, states are experiencing record winter temperatures, 40 degrees above normal in come places.

Click here for the full story (opens in new tab).

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Mysterious metal sphere washes up on Japanese beach

The 5 ft. diameter metal sphere on a Japanese beach, now apparently cordoned off.

Locals discovered an iron ball about 5 feet in diameter on a beach in Hamamatsu City, Japan, this week. The ball is hollow and sand-colored. When its discovery reached the ears of officials, they scrambled the bomb squad to examine it. Apparently the sphere isn’t a bomb, but no one is quite sure what it is or where it came from.

There’s some disagreement about when it appeared on the beach. A local man who routinely runs on the beach said he was surprised at all the hubbub around the ball one morning as he believes it had been there for a month. “I tried to push it, but it wouldn’t budge,” the man said. 

Some believe it to be a type of buoy, while others have jokingly dubbed it “Godzilla egg”. Officials are regarding it more as a curiosity than a threat.

However, Japan has been on heightened alert about unknown objects in their seaways and airspace in recent years. In the last few months, there have been two missile tests from North Korea that flew over the island. This is in addition to growing concern about Chinese spy balloons, which have been spotted over Japan since 2019.

Click here for the full story (opens in new tab).

Please share any thoughts, comments or questions in the Comments section below!