Hidalgo upset by plan for Ohio waste
County judge calls lack of notification about contaminated water coming here a ‘problem’
The contaminated firefighting water being transported from the East Palestine, Ohio, train crash and chemical spill to Harris County has been moving through the area for more than a week, apparently without knowledge of public officials, County Judge Lina Hidalgo said Thursday night.
In a late-night, livestreamed news conference, Hidalgo said that Texas Molecular, the Deer Park company receiving the wastewater with plans to clean it and dispose of it in injection wells, was receiving as many as 30 trucks per day carrying the waste and had already received about half a million gallons of water since last week. Hidalgo said the amount of waste, and the length of time it had been moving through the county, was unknown to her and other county officials until Thursday. She said she first learned about the contaminated material from a TV news reporter Wednesday night.
“I’m not clear on who has the full picture of what is happening here, and that is a problem,” Hidalgo said.
On Feb. 4, more than three dozen Norfolk Southern freight cars — including 11 carrying hazardous materials — derailed near East Palestine in east Ohio, prompting an evacuation because of a potential explosion from the wreckage, according to the Associated Press.
Officials intentionally released and burned vinyl chloride from five rail cars, sending flames and smoke into the sky. Officials were trying to avoid an uncontrolled blast with the fire, but it left residents concerned about the long-term health effects, according to the AP.
The hazardous material being brought to Deer Park is contaminated liquid removed from the immediate site of the derailment. Texas Molecular President Frank Marine said Thursday that the water contains “very low levels of soluble vinyl chloride.”
The shipments also don’t contain any “pure products,” and the company was abiding by state and federal regulations for disposing hazardous waste, Marine said.
Hidalgo said there was no law
requiring her office to be informed about wastewater but that she was upset that local officials were kept out of the loop by a “fundamentally broken” system. She said her office had been in contact with the company, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and outside industry and environmental experts.
“This is a wake-up call,” Hidalgo said. “It doesn’t look like any regulations necessarily were broken by the fact that nobody told us. But it doesn’t quite seem right.”
Hidalgo said she wanted more information about the material being injected into the wells and how it could affect other material already injected in the wells or surface water. She also said she wanted clear information about how the water was being moved from Ohio to Texas and what precautions were being taken to protect it. Additionally, she also wanted information on why the water was taken to Texas instead of wells closer to Ohio.
She said the county was now working to ensure that the contaminated water is moving safely through the area and was looking into the safety records of Texas Molecular. So far, the company’s record seems to be strong, she said.
“My goal tonight is not to create more worry than there already is,” Hidalgo said. “But I know that our community was taken aback by the news, just as I was, and I don’t want to be sitting on information that is relevant to this very public, very concerning disaster that is still ongoing in Ohio.”