Water may still end up being treated in Baltimore
But the wastewater from East Palestine wouldn’t be released into city’s sewers
Contaminated wastewater from the fiery East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment could be coming to Baltimore for treatment after all, but it wouldn’t be released into the city sewer system.
Instead, it would be sent back to Ohio under the latest plan proposed by the Norfolk Southern railroad.
An earlier proposal to have a South Baltimore industrial wastewater company treat the Ohio water and release it into the city’s sewer system sparked a backlash from city and state politicians.
The companies were left searching for solutions after Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration denied access to the city sewer system in late March.
The latest plan submitted by Norfolk Southern hasn’t yet received final authorization from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which is overseeing the cleanup, according to a statement from the agency.
The company receiving the waste, Clean Harbors, is located in an industrial area near the city’s trash incinerator and the Horseshoe Casino Baltimore and adjacent to the Gwynns Falls and the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River. The Westport neighborhood is to the south, across Interstate 95, and Pigtown is to the north.
Clean Harbors, a Massachusetts-based firm that specializes in treating industrial waste, would handle some of the rainwater, stream water and other water collected from above and below the Ohio derailment cleanup site at its Baltimore facility.
After treatment in Baltimore, the water would be shipped to Clean Harbors Cleveland for final disposal in Ohio, said Jay
Apperson, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment.
The choice was made “out of respect” for Scott’s late March denial, though the facility is “uniquely designed to safely process any organics, even trace moments, and remove those from the wastewater,” said James Buckley, a Clean Harbors spokesman.
The original plan to bring the wastewater to Baltimore for treatment and discharge it through the city sewer system sent a host of local officials into an uproar. They argued that the city’s beleaguered Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant, where the
675,000 gallons of the treated Ohio water would wind up, wasn’t equipped to handle it. They worried the city’s notoriously leaky sewer pipes would let some slip out along the way.
The Ohio derailment in early February included several train cars containing vinyl chloride — a substance used in plastic production that is known to cause a rare form of cancer — and other contaminants.
Scott’s decision to deny Clean Harbors the ability to dump into the sewers seemingly ended the debate, after the company stated it wouldn’t bring the waste into Baltimore at all.
But now Baltimore is back on the table, pending a final OK from the EPA.
“We got a heads up from the state and the feds this time that Clean Harbors is going to have it at their facility,” Scott said. “[As far as] having it at their facility, there’s nothing we can do.”
Still, some elected officials feel wary about the new plan, including Del. Kathy Szeliga, a Republican who represents Baltimore County in the Maryland General Assembly.
Szeliga said she has received calls from constituents, including individuals living along the Back River, a community still reeling from bacteria pollution stemming from the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant.
“Even though it’s supposedly not coming there, they just want assurances from everyone. And we’re all still scratching our heads: Like, why are you bringing it to Baltimore?” she said. “Why can’t you treat it in Ohio?”
The answer is unclear, but Norfolk Southern has faced significant headwinds in its search for facilities that can treat the waste. The governor of Oklahoma, for instance, stated he turned away a shipment of the waste, prompting a letter from EPA Administrator Michael Regan, arguing such actions were “unlawful.”
The rail company declined to comment on its plans to transport the waste to Baltimore, then back to Ohio until EPA approval, though it confirmed its intentions.
“It seems like they desperately need to treat this stuff somewhere,” said Alice Volpitta, Baltimore Harbor waterkeeper at nonprofit group Blue Water Baltimore.
Volpitta’s group was among those concerned with the original plan, largely because of the known problems with the city sewer pipes and wastewater plant. But the situation also raised awareness of the dangers associated with the treatment of chemicals in the city, which occurs frequently without the kind of uproar provoked by the East Palestine water, Volpitta said.
“This whole situation for me has really unveiled this problem of communities being put at risk just by what’s going through them,” she said.
It also brought attention to a class of environmental permits that normally don’t receive much scrutiny, which are issued by localities like Baltimore City to facilities that do not discharge wastewater directly into a water body, but into a wastewater treatment plant, Volpitta said.
Information about what those permits allow, and whether they are being followed, is more difficult to come by, she said.
“It makes it pretty impossible for citizen groups like mine to do any watchdogging,” Volpitta said.
Szeliga said she hopes to put forward a bill increasing the transparency of those permits in next year’s General Assembly session, after efforts stalled to bring it up late last session, when the East Palestine water plan was first announced.
Scott said there are ongoing conversations within his administration about making the permits more transparent.
“We need to have — as this resolves itself — have a conversation with our partners at the state and federal level about how we communicate this kind of thing out and what those processes look like,” he said.
The online records that are easily accessible show that Clean Harbors’ Baltimore facility has had a few run-ins with EPA inspectors over the past five years, which resulted in about $75,000 in fines.
Both the fines resulted from issues observed at the facility during two inspections in 2018. Inspectors found valves on hazardous waste handling equipment that did not have caps as required, and stated that the facility was not maintaining up-todate information about the substances it was handling, or keeping up-to-date emergency contacts.
Clean Harbors has not answered questions about those fines.