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If there hadn’t been construction planned for the bridge that crosses over Leslie Run, one of the creeks that runs through the middle of East Palestine, Ohio, Rick Tsai and Randy DeHaven might not have noticed the worst contamination they’d seen in the creek in weeks.
A backhoe had hoisted a chunk of earth from the bank of the creek, leaving a pool about eight feet across and deep enough to come up to the knees of Tsai’s rubber fishing waders. What it also left, in Tsai’s words, was an opportunity for a sort of “geological sample” — evidence that oil and chemicals still lingered in the soil and in the creeks six months after a catastrophic derailment.
On February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern train carrying thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals derailed and spilled its contents in the town of East Palestine, on the Pennsylvania border. Three days later, in an effort to prevent a dangerous explosion, Norfolk Southern supervised a controlled vent-and-burn of hazardous vinyl chloride, which produced a toxic cloud that spread for miles over the surrounding area.
On a late August morning, Tsai asked me to stand on the freshly created edge of the pool, while he shook some dirt and rocks loose from the bank with a metal rod. As they tumbled into the water, an iridescent web spooled out across the water’s surface, emanating from the point Tsai had disturbed. He exclaimed into his respirator, declared the water as bad as he’d ever seen, and gestured for me to lean down and look closer. The simple fact of my body’s weight on the creek bank elicited a new burst of oily sheen, billowing into the still pool.
As the one-year anniversary of the derailment approaches, Tsai, DeHaven, and many other residents across East Palestine and its surrounding towns have not accepted federal regulators’ assurance that the water, air, and soil are safe for its residents. In rubber boots and waders, smartphones strapped to their chests to document the pollution, they wield shovels and rods to dislodge rocks and earth that harbor reserves of substances persistently leaching into the creeks.
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