EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — One day in mid-October of last year, Lonnie Miller sat at a small table in her kitchen and thought about the issues that had come to dominate her life: the nightmares about fires and rats, the unusual health problems, the meetings with counselors and physicians, the hateful comments she’d read on social media.

She’d lost her business and was in the process of saying goodbye to her house of nearly 30 years. So much of what Lonnie cherished had been shattered. The village she loved no longer felt like home. At least her small family remained intact and, she hoped, healthy. 

The blare of a train horn interrupted her thoughts.

Norfolk Southern tracks run 200 feet from Lonnie’s house on East Clark Street. In her neighborhood, the cadence of life conforms to rail traffic. Passing trains stop conversations as well as traffic. Families watching movies on TV hit the pause button until the rumbling and blaring stops. As a toddler, Lonnie’s son, Austin, pressed his face against a front window to catch glimpses of the passing cars, and they called to him. Gondolas, hoppers, tankers — he learned all the names. Thomas the Tank Engine smiled at him from the pages of children’s books. It was a way of embracing the seemingly benign, inescapable and even friendly presence of trains.

No longer. Lonnie now shivers at the shrieking of rail horns.

“I hate being here and hearing the trains,” she said. “I hate it. For eight months of my life, nothing has been normal.”

Change — fiery, loud and abrupt — arrived on a frigid Friday evening one year ago. In the following days, people who’d never heard of East Palestine viewed their first images of the village. Here’s what they saw: colossal towers of smoke, roiling flames and blackened rail cars — the things that came to symbolize a place once known for its production of rubber and pottery and where Bob Hope earned his first paycheck as an entertainer. 

The world fixated on the unfolding environmental disaster for a few days, then moved on. East Palestine’s 4,700 residents were left to figure out how to live in a transformed village. Some residents yearned for normalcy and returned to daily routines. Some decided the health risks were too great and moved out. A few feared their homes were contaminated and wanted to leave but couldn’t afford to do so.

Their stories of fear, frustration, resolve, determination and anger unite them with a growing list of communities whose names are now synonymous with contamination — Flint, Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Times Beach. What separates the East Palestine stories is the way they begin: with a singular, terrifying event.

Calm, then chaos

By 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 3, 2023, Lonnie Miller had covered herself in a blanket and settled into a living room chair. Her husband, Dave, leaned back in a recliner beside her. The glow of a TV filled the room. Son Austin, 21, listened to music in his bedroom downstairs.

For Lonnie, 47, this was an ideal way to end the week — curling up at home with those she loved nearby, watching something on Netflix and sending occasional texts. She likes to stay in touch. On this night, she texted two people — her sister, Connie, and a friend. The three discussed a village proposal to change food truck licensing fees while Dave, 53, nodded off. He had risen before 3 a.m. to begin his day as a crew leader at a metal stamping company in Columbiana. By now he was running out of gas. 

Twenty-six miles west of the Miller home, an eastbound Norfolk Southern train designated as 32N barreled through the Ohio town of Salem. Security cameras focused on frigid parking lots captured images of the train as it passed in the distant darkness. Video showed the orange glow of a fire under the wheels of the 23rd car in the train.

A massive collection of 150 rail cars and three locomotives, train 32N extended 9,300 feet and weighed 18,000 tons. Twenty of its tank cars contained hazardous materials — flammable and combustible liquids and gasses. 

The train began its journey two days earlier in Madison, Illinois, just outside of St. Louis. Its path arched into northern Indiana and Ohio before veering southeast toward the Pennsylvania border. Twice the train developed mechanical issues, once at Bement, Illinois, and again near Williamsport, Indiana. In both instances, crews made repairs, and the train was cleared to continue on its route.

Approximately 20 minutes after leaving Salem, train 32N entered Columbiana. One witness heard the train emit a “loud metal screeching sound.” In New Waterford, 6 miles from East Palestine, sparks flew from the burning wheel of the 23rd car. Investigators would later issue a preliminary report revealing that the fire was the result of an overheated wheel bearing.

Traveling at 47 mph, train 32N screeched through East Palestine with the 23rd car trailing flames and sparks that extended the length of the car. At the Market Street intersection, the burning car passed within feet of a Marathon gas station.

Train 32N’s journey came to its disastrous end at 8:54 p.m. on the east side of town, just past the North Pleasant Drive intersection and 1,800 feet from the Miller home. Thirty-eight of the train’s cars toppled off the track and piled into an accordion-shaped tangle of dented and twisted steel. Some of those cars burst into flames.

The thundering sound of metal thumping against metal jolted Lonnie from her Friday night serenity. Lonnie was accustomed to train noises. This one was different. Unusually loud, it rattled windows and hinted at something calamitous. Alarmed, she turned to Dave. “I think a train derailed,” she said.

Half asleep, Dave shrugged it off. It’s just slack in the train, he said. They heard it all the time.

Lonnie didn’t think so. She texted Connie: Had she heard the noise? Yes, Connie replied. She lived farther north on North Pleasant Drive, more than a mile from the tracks. 

Lonnie nudged Dave. Something big has happened, she insisted. Dave rose from his chair, put on his shoes and walked outside to see for himself. The night was exceptionally cold, about 10 degrees, but otherwise quiet and normal. Then Dave looked east and saw an orange glow on the horizon. Smoke rose into the sky.

While Dave was outside, Lonnie rushed downstairs to alert Austin. At first, he thought his mother was joking, but he followed her upstairs. Dave came in from the cold and told Lonnie she was probably right, a train had derailed. He told them about the flames. They could see for themselves from the front porch.

Dave wanted to get closer to see what was happening. Lonnie didn’t think that was a good idea. 

“We know people who live in that area,” Dave said. Maybe they’d need help. Dave backed his pickup truck out of the driveway and headed east, down nearby Martin Street.

Nathan Velez learned about the crash from his brother-in-law, Steven, who had called and left several messages. Nathan, 32, had returned home after working all day in his small engine repair shop on East Taggart Street and was busy fixing dinner for his family. He wasn’t paying attention to his phone. When he finally returned the call, Steven was excited. “Dude, somebody got hit on the tracks,” he said.

Steven lives on East Taggart Street, near the crash site. The impact had shaken him out of bed. He originally thought a train had collided with a vehicle at an intersection. “I can’t believe you didn’t hear it,” he said to Nathan. With two kids and two dogs, the Velez household could be a noisy place. Outside sounds often go unnoticed. Besides, the Velez house was located more than four blocks from the railroad tracks.

Nathan hung up the phone, turned to his son, Troy, 9, and said, “Hey, bud, hop in the truck. Let’s go.” The two headed east, to the end of East Clark Street. There, Nathan could see a jumble of burning and overturned cars that extended at least a few hundred feet. The scope of the fire stunned him. A number of tanker cars were fully engulfed, and the flames were spreading. He could see them jumping from car to car along connecting hydraulic lines. 

Nathan pulled out his phone and took a picture, then sent it to a Youngstown TV station with a simple note: “Train derailment in East Palestine.”

Nathan lowered a window. He and Troy could feel the heat of the fire. A moment later, something exploded with enough force to shake Nathan’s truck. He put the vehicle in gear and drove quickly back to his home. He had no idea what was in those tanker cars, but he knew the danger of applying extreme heat to pressurized containers. An acetylene tank had once ignited in his shop — It shot upward with enough force to put a hole in the roof. And as a kid, he’d throw empty spray paint cans in campfires and wait for the “boom,” a game country boys played. Nathan looked at those rail cars and saw potential bombs.

‘I think we should leave’

Bob Figley was relaxing in the basement of his home on South Pleasant Drive when one of his employees called to tell him something big had happened in front of Figley’s store, Brushville Supply on East Taggart Street.

Figley and his wife, Marilyn, live on 30 acres of property about a half-mile from the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks. He got dressed, then drove north. At East Taggart Street, he saw before him a wall of flames rising at least 100 feet into the air. It looked like something out of a dream — or a nightmare.

He turned right onto East Taggart and pulled into the parking lot of his hardware store, which sits on a hill and offered a view of the disaster unfolding below. For a while, he and a few others — neighbors and an employee — watched in awe as firefighters poured water on the derailed cars. One person mentioned some of the cars contained chlorine or maybe chloride. It was just a rumor (several cars, in fact, contained vinyl chloride), but the possibility that the cars held dangerous chemicals alarmed Figley.

“I think we should leave,” he said.

From the Millers’ home, the fire looked menacing — a looming mass of raging flames and smoke just beyond homes down the street. But that perspective of the blaze, from its western end, proved deceiving. It was in truth much larger. Dave, like Nathan, had driven to Martin Street and seen the fire’s terrible breadth. When he returned home, he told Lonnie, “It’s big.”

By now, sirens screamed all over town. About 300 firefighters from 50 different departments would eventually respond to the disaster. Lonnie grew concerned about her neighbor, an elderly woman who lived alone. So she stepped outside, crossed the lawn and walked up a series of steps to the neighbor’s door.

Eastbound emergency vehicles roared and honked down nearby streets. The sky directly above was clear — Lonnie could see the moon and stars. However, the eastern sky was completely obscured by a rising column of smoke that reflected the growing fire. This is crazy, she thought.

Lonnie pounded on her neighbor’s front door. After several minutes the neighbor answered, stunned and confused. She’d slept through the event. What’s going on? she asked. 

While the two women talked, a man approached from the sidewalk and said everyone had to leave the area. Local police had begun evacuating nearby residents.

“Where do I go?” the neighbor asked. “I don’t have any place to go.”

The man offered no advice. “You just need to leave,” he said.

“Just get in your car and go,” Lonnie said. The neighbor indicated she’d head to a relative’s house in nearby Salem.

Back at her home a few minutes later, Lonnie told Dave they needed to go someplace safer, but Dave demurred. If everyone left, he wondered, who would protect the neighborhood? What if looters came?

Standing in the living room, Lonnie and Dave’s conversation was interrupted by the wail of a train horn and the screeching sound of train brakes. Lonnie froze.

“Oh, my God!” she said. “There’s a second train!” She braced herself for the impact of a locomotive crashing into the derailed cars. It didn’t happen; the train stopped in time. But the incident added to the stress. Everything seemed to be spinning out of control. 

The family made a quick decision: Lonnie and Austin would go to Connie’s house on North Pleasant Drive. It’s certainly safer there. Dave would stay on East Clark Street with the family’s two English shepherds, Chevy and Lincoln.

Austin was the first to leave, heading out in his Honda Civic. Lonnie stuffed a few items into a bag, gave Dave a hug and said, “I love you.” She then climbed into her small SUV and began the journey to Connie’s place.                                        

She immediately ran into a problem: Traffic clogged all routes to North Pleasant. It seemed everyone was trying to flee town or get into town to see what was happening. Plus, there were all those emergency vehicles.

Alone in her car and stuck in traffic, with sirens blaring all around her and a fire blazing out of control less than a half-mile away, Lonnie began to panic. She worried about Austin — certainly he was caught up in this mess of traffic. She called Connie, who said Austin had not yet arrived. “He should have been there by now,” Lonnie thought. Where was he?

Nathan Velez returned to his East North Street home and told his wife, Nicole, what he’d seen. “Babe, we’ve got to get out,” he said. Nicole held the couple’s 1-year-old daughter, Cambria. It was nearing the child’s bedtime.

“What are you talking about?” Nicole said. “It’s nine at night.”

“It’s not good,” Nathan said. “Everyone is going to have to leave.”

Nathan’s serious tone alarmed Nicole. She began gathering supplies she’d need to care for the baby — diapers, clothes, food. It was now past 10 p.m. TV news played in the background while family members packed. A news anchor mentioned the train derailment, and a photograph of the fire flashed across the screen. “Hey, Dad,” Troy called out. “That’s your picture.”

Nathan grew concerned about his mother-in-law, who lived on East Clark Street. So he drove to her home and brought her back to his family’s East North Street house. Steven, his wife, Haley, and their dog joined the Velez family, and they all secured rooms at a Beaver Falls hotel.

Nathan, Nicole and the children piled into Nicole’s Toyota SUV and headed to a downtown gas station to fill the tank. Market Street was packed with emergency vehicles. The entire town, it seemed, was alight with flashing red and blue lights. The situation was even more dire than Nathan thought.

He told Nicole they needed to return home to get a small safe and the guns the couple owned. Once there, Nathan checked to make certain he’d locked his pickup truck. He noticed a thin layer of what he thought was snow on the vehicle. He rubbed his finger across the metal and discovered the snow was actually ash.

This can’t be healthy

Feeling trapped on East North Street, Lonnie made an abrupt U-turn — later, she was certain she’d driven into a resident’s yard — then took a long, looping route to Connie’s house. As she descended a hill overlooking town, Lonnie was stunned by what she saw. A massive conflagration now dominated what was normally a bucolic view. She stopped, rolled down her window and took a single photograph.

A few minutes later, Lonnie was relieved to see her son, Austin, sitting in Connie’s living room. She plopped down on a couch, then she and Connie called their mother, Dorothy Davis, who lived a few miles away in Pennsylvania.

The sisters spent the next several hours texting friends and checking Facebook for updates. Residents all over East Palestine were posting reports on what they’d seen and heard. People speculated about what was in those burning tanker cars. At one point, someone suggested it was malt liquor. It was difficult to determine what was truthful.

Meantime, back on East Clark Street, Dave remained in the house until around 11:30, when he detected a strong chemical odor. It smelled like burning plastic or paint. This can’t be healthy, he thought, so he loaded the dogs, Chevy and Lincoln, into the cab of his pickup truck and drove off. He headed west to the Market Street business district, where he noticed something odd: Although Market was farther from the derailment, the odor there was more pungent than on East Clark.

For a while, Dave cruised around town, stopping on occasion to take a few pictures. Exhausted, he pulled into the parking lot of a Dollar General Store on state Route 14 so he could get some sleep. The two dogs curled up in the back seat of his extended cab while Dave reclined in the driver’s seat. Dave closed his eyes. More than 2 miles from the derailment, he could still smell a chemical odor.

Nathan and Nicole and their two children checked into a hotel room around 1 a.m. Saturday morning. Cambria and Troy were by now terrified but soon settled down and fell asleep. Nathan and Nicole, shocked by what had occurred in the past few hours, spent the next several hours checking social media and news reports for updates on the derailment. They soon determined they needed to stay out of town, at least for a while.

Nicole found an Airbnb in Canfield, Ohio, about 20 miles north of East Palestine. “How long should we book it?” Nicole asked. “Book it for two weeks,” Nathan said. The couple weren’t rich — they live on income from Nathan’s small engine repair shop and Nicole’s salary as a nurse — but they saw no alternative to spending the money. Nathan had seen the fire double in size in an hour. He knew the explosive potential of those tanker cars. At 6 a.m. Saturday, after spending five hours at the Beaver Falls hotel, the family departed for Canfield.

Having been up all night texting friends and checking for updates, Lonnie returned to her home around noon Saturday, hoping to persuade her husband to leave. She found him folding laundry in the dining room. Daylight streamed in through a window, illuminating a very fine glitter suspended in the air. It looked metallic. Officials had yet to release information about the materials burning in those derailed cars, but Lonnie suspected the glitter wasn’t good. She pinched the air with her fingers. “Can’t you see what’s in the air?” she asked Dave. “Why are you here? We need to get out of here!”

Dave didn’t see the urgency. After a tumultuous Friday night, Saturday seemed normal. He could still smell chemicals, but the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency issued a statement saying the air was safe. Dave had seen men in hardhats walking along the railroad tracks across the street. They weren’t wearing gas masks, so how bad could it be?

Lonnie wanted to leave but wouldn’t do so without her husband. The couple remained at East Clark Street as the derailed cars continued to smolder and burn throughout the day. Austin returned home that evening. Meanwhile, friends who’d decided to leave East Palestine and stay in hotels texted Lonnie, urging her to get out.

‘Risk of catastrophic failure’

On Sunday morning, a deputy from the Columbiana County sheriff’s department arrived on East Clark Street and asked Dave how many people were in the house. Officials were getting a head count, the deputy explained. Lonnie asked the man about chemicals on the train, and he suggested she go to the community center at a local park. She could get answers there.

By then, officials had announced that some of the burning cars contained vinyl chloride, a combustible material known to cause cancer. Lonnie drove to the information center but got few answers there. People wearing Norfolk Southern shirts seemed more interested in collecting residents’ information — phone contacts and Social Security numbers, for example — than in helping people and answering questions about chemical exposure, she said later. Lonnie left angry and appalled at the lack of urgency.

At home, Dave kept thinking about the odd smells. It didn’t make sense. Why were the chemical odors more pronounced downtown, farther from the derailment? At one point on Sunday afternoon, Lonnie showed Dave social media posts of dead fish in Sulfur Run, a creek that runs past the derailment site and through the village’s downtown.

It was then that the danger became real for Dave. He threw his hands in the air. “Oh, my God, it’s already in the water,” he said. “That’s why there’s dead fish. That’s why it smells so bad downtown.” He figured chemicals leaking from the derailed cars had contaminated the area’s creeks and waterways.

Still, Lonnie and Dave decided they could stay in East Palestine for at least a while. That changed Sunday evening, as the couple watched a news conference held by local officials and carried live on Facebook. After a delay of several minutes, East Palestine fire Chief Keith Drabick sat down at a microphone to announce a “drastic change” in the vinyl chloride in one of the derailed cars.

“We are at risk now of a catastrophic failure of that container,” he said. “Measures are being taken to try to control that and prevent that from happening,” but he offered no details about those measures.

Everyone within a 1-mile radius of the derailment must evacuate immediately, he said. Those who defied the order and stayed in their homes could be arrested. The catastrophic failure, if it occurred, would produce hydrogen chloride and phosgene gas, Drabick said.

And then, less than 90 seconds after Drabick had begun talking, the news conference ended. Officials announced they would take no questions.

Moments later, each of the Millers’ cellphones emitted the high-pitched beep of an emergency alert. For Lonnie, the moment seemed filled with dread. How long did they have before the “catastrophic failure”? Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine issued a statement that went further, saying that the tanker could explode “with the potential of deadly shrapnel traveling more than a mile.” The Miller home was less than half that distance from the smoldering pile of cars. Could the explosion wreck the entire neighborhood? What about those chemicals? What would happen to them if the rail cars blew up?

Lonnie rushed through the house, grabbing family photos and stuffing clothes into duffel bags. Dave began filling zip-close bags with dog food. Lonnie screamed at him, “Just take the whole container! Put the whole container in your truck right now!”

The plan was to meet other family members at the Pennsylvania home of Lonnie’s mother, Dorothy Davis, and figure out what to do. Lonnie’s sister, Connie, and her husband, John, would be there, too.

Lonnie, Dave and Austin each drove separate vehicles. The family’s two dogs climbed into Dave’s truck. In the rush to leave, Lonnie backed her vehicle into Austin’s Civic. She simply misjudged where her son’s car was positioned. This evening, like Friday, was devolving into chaos, Lonnie thought. The derailment menaced everything she cared about — her family, her home, her neighborhood. As she drove out of East Palestine, Lonnie wept and prayed.

Once everyone had arrived at Dorothy’s house, Austin confronted his mother about the crash on East Clark Street. “What the hell, Mom?” he screamed at her. Then he saw the look on her face, realized how upset she was, and the two embraced. “I’m sorry,” Austin said.

Dave called hotels, searching for a place that would accept dogs because they could not stay at Dorothy’s small mobile home. Dave found an available room in Beaver Falls, but Dorothy wanted Austin to stay with her. Lonnie relented. She and Dave and the dogs headed to Beaver Falls. At least for now, it seemed, everyone was safe.

At the hotel later that night, Lonnie had trouble calming her dog Chevy. Voices in the hallway and the sound of other people with animals moving into rooms added to Chevy’s anxiety. The dog shook uncontrollably. Around 1 a.m., Lonnie decided to take her for a walk. 

Passing through the hotel lobby, Lonnie saw a group of workers waiting for room assignments. The workers were covered in black dust, like coal miners. She figured these were men who’d been trying to put out the fire in East Palestine, so she walked up to one of the older workers and thanked him for helping the town. “Ma’am,” the man said in a thick Southern accent, “this is what we do. We go from town to town and clean things up like this. After this, there will probably be another one.”

His words shocked Lonnie. Another one? How often does this happen? 

The past few days had been emotionally overwhelming. The derailment destroyed normal life on Friday night. Then, on Saturday, things seemed to settle down. Now Lonnie wasn’t sure she’d ever see her home again. Stressed and physically exhausted, Lonnie returned Chevy to the hotel room, then walked into the bathroom, shut the door, sat on the floor and cried.

A black cloud

Five of the tanker cars containing vinyl chloride remained intact after the derailment, but Norfolk Southern officials and their contractors felt at least one of them was unsafe because a relief valve had malfunctioned. The car’s contents were heating up, officials said.

To prevent an explosion, they proposed using small charges to create holes in the five cars, allowing the hazardous material to flow into a trench where it would be ignited by flares. They called this process “vent and burn.”

Fire Chief Drabick, acting as “incident commander,” said Norfolk Southern officials and their contractors told him the situation was urgent and gave him just 13 minutes to make a decision whether to approve the vent and burn process. Drabick heard no objections from the first responders, railroad officials and hazardous materials experts that made up the “unified command.” So around noon on Monday he gave the OK.

Lonnie researched the dangers of vinyl chloride and phosgene gas, which, she learned, was used as a chemical weapon in World War I. She felt guilty about leaving her mother, Dorothy, and son Austin in an area she felt was unsafe. 

On Monday morning, she called her mother and sister, and everyone agreed they needed to leave the area immediately. A hotel room wasn’t the answer. Family members decided to drive separately and meet at a shopping center parking lot near the town of East Liverpool, Ohio, about 20 miles north. There, Dave sat in his truck and again used his phone to search for an available house or an Airbnb. Lonnie posted a plea on Facebook. Hours passed, with no luck. Everything was booked as people from East Palestine scrambled to leave town. For 4½ hours family members sat in their separate vehicles in the cold. Dave grew increasingly frustrated. At one point Lonnie, sitting in her small SUV, looked over and saw him weeping in his truck.

Finally, Dave secured rental rooms at an East Liverpool house that could accommodate everyone except Lonnie’s sister, Connie, and her husband, John, who found a separate place to stay. 

Hours passed on Monday afternoon while East Palestine residents, many now scattered about the region in hotels and Airbnbs and at the homes of friends and relatives, waited to see what would happen when officials ignited the vinyl chloride.

Nathan Velez and his family, including his mother-in-law and brother-in-law, gathered in a room at the Canfield Airbnb they’d rented. The TV was tuned to a local news station covering the story live. An iPad and cellphones streamed live feeds. Everyone was talking. When Nathan noticed the burn-off was beginning, he hollered out, “Everyone shut up. You all need to watch this. All of us in the room might lose everything right now.”

The room grew quiet. On the TV, a small fireball rising from the derailment site morphed into a massive roiling black plume. Weather conditions at the time were less than ideal. Over East Palestine, a layer of warm air lay atop colder air hovering near the earth’s surface, creating a temperature inversion. The problem with inversions is that the warm air acts like a hard ceiling, trapping smoke and pollutants.

As a result, that thick plume of smoke from the “controlled burn” rose to a height of about 3,000 feet, then spread in an ever-widening circle that soon filled the sky and darkened East Palestine. 

Nicole was the first to respond to live video of the burn. “Are you kidding me?” she said.

Nathan looked closely at drone shots and could see the family’s East North Street house below the plume. What was in that black cloud? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be safe — and it was coming down in his village. Nathan and Nicole decided to extend the Airbnb lease as long as possible. They knew they could never again live in East Palestine.

The Millers watched the same images in their East Liverpool rental. The black cloud appalled Lonnie. She imagined East Palestine as ground zero in Manhattan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, with everything and everyone covered in a choking dust.

Bob Figley, the hardware store owner, looked at the black cloud and wondered, “Who thought it was a good idea to blow up a toxic bomb?”

He and his wife, Marilyn, had stayed with relatives on the west side of town in the days immediately following the derailment but made brief visits to their home and business over the next few days. They wanted to move several pregnant goats they were raising to a safer location and feed their chickens. Police called and told Bob they wanted him to shut down his business temporarily. He wondered about the future. Would he be able to reopen? Would customers return to a store so close to an environmental disaster?

The rising plume reminded Deane Cope of mushroom clouds rising over American deserts during atomic bomb tests in the years after World War II. As a child, Deane had seen films of those tests. “My God, this is really something,” he thought as the cloud rose over East Palestine.

Deane, 79, watched the burn-off from the yard of a friend’s house in Unity Township, where he and his wife, Debbie, 67, had been staying since the night of the derailment. Debbie saw the cloud from inside the house. She and Deane were anxious to return to their normal lives and thought the burn-off would be a step in that direction.

The Copes live on East Clark Street, across from the Miller house. Norfolk Southern’s tracks run just beyond the couple’s backyard. Deane grew up on East Clark. Trains had always been a comfort to him. He remembered his grandmother feeding hobos who rode the rails decades ago.

Debbie felt differently. Those rumbling trains, passing so close to her house and rattling the walls, could be a hassle. On occasion, the couple had to straighten pictures knocked askew. In warm weather, Debbie liked to sit on the back porch and enjoy moments of peace and quiet, but she found it hard to do when trains rolled through every 30 minutes or so.

After the burn-off, Deane thought he and Debbie would soon be able to return home. But his wife wasn’t so certain. She’d struggled with blood cancer for more than a decade. All those chemicals worried her. “Is everything contaminated?” she wondered. “What’s inside the house? What are we going to be breathing?”

‘We have to figure things out’

Lonnie, Dave and Austin remained in East Liverpool until Tuesday, Feb. 21. Lonnie wanted to stay longer. The family paid for lodging with a credit card, and she was willing to do so for another few months if needed. She felt the environmental damage caused by the derailment had rendered East Palestine unsafe. But Dave insisted. 

“We have to try to figure things out,” he said. Besides, Dave added, Lonnie needed to prepare her testimony for a Feb. 23 hearing into the derailment. The hearing had been scheduled in Beaver County by Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano. Lonnie had reached out to his office because Mastriano chaired a committee responsible for overseeing fire and emergency management, and as a result she was one of several people invited to testify. It felt good to be heard by someone with authority, she said.

Once back on East Clark Street, however, the house did not feel the same. Odors lingered, and there were health concerns. Some of Lonnie’s friends had reported rashes, chemical bronchitis, swollen faces and a burning sensation around the mouth. Lonnie herself had experienced nosebleeds and crushing headaches. “Much worse than a migraine,” she said. 

She tried to blame these on other factors — lack of sleep, stress. But she remembered the Flint, Michigan, water crisis, so mishandled at the local, state and federal level that several officials resigned and a number of others were criminally charged. (A state court found even the prosecution was mishandled, and the charges were either dismissed or dropped.) She thought of the 9/11 emergency responders in New York who experienced an increased risk of cancer due to their exposure to toxic dust, and the water contamination issue at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. She begged Dave to put their belongings in a rental truck and just leave.

“We can’t just walk away from everything,” Dave said. He got so upset at one point that he stormed out of the house, got in his pickup truck and drove away. Distressed, Lonnie turned to Austin and said, “I don’t know what Dad’s going to do.”

Her husband was “so angry and upset that he couldn’t save us, and he wanted to. He came back home within five minutes. He was just devastated.”

The couple spent that night lying in bed and listening to the trains running along tracks 200 feet away. Norfolk Southern had reopened the track a few days after the burn-off; now the rail traffic seemed never-ending. “They just kept going like we didn’t exist,” Lonnie said.

Soon, Lonnie began experiencing nightmares. In one, a house across the street became engulfed in flames, and Lonnie could do nothing to save her neighbor. In another, she and Austin sat in an automobile while a train derailed in front of them. Lonnie would wake up screaming, with Dave trying to console her. Another time, she dreamed of rats attacking in the bedroom. Lonnie’s dogs tried to fight off the rodents but were overwhelmed. A friend later told Lonnie that, in dreams, rats signify contamination.

Lonnie began sleeping in a living room chair, with a duffel bag of clothes beside her, in case another train derailed and she needed to leave quickly. Eventually, Dave, too, slept in the living room so he could be near his wife.

One night in March, Lonnie awoke long before sunup. She saw Dave awake in the recliner beside her. He’d been thinking about chemical contamination. In those days after the derailment, he wondered, what did they breathe into their lungs? He regretted driving around town and taking pictures in the hours after the railroad cars had run off the tracks. He was concerned the chemicals could already be wreaking havoc inside his body. Would he become ill with cancer or some other disease in one year? Five years? Ten years? Dave feared he wouldn’t be around when Lonnie and Austin needed him.

Lonnie and Dave wept, then embraced and prayed that God would heal and protect them. “You have to stay strong,” Lonnie said. After a while, both Lonnie and Dave calmed themselves. Lonnie then walked into the kitchen and vomited in the sink.

“We both knew there was nothing about our home and our town that would ever be the same again,” she said. They had to get out.

Nathan Velez and his brother-in-law, Steven, returned to East Palestine on Feb. 8. The chemical smell hit Nathan “like a fist,” burning his eyes and, within seconds, giving him a headache. He visited his shop on East Taggart Street, closer to the derailment. It was even worse there — “like stepping inside a can of paint thinner,” he said.

He visited a Norfolk Southern assistance center and got into an argument with a company representative who Nathan felt was demeaning and insulting. Security escorted Nathan out of the building. Nathan was stressed and exhausted. He and Nicole were spending thousands of dollars each month, bouncing from one Airbnb to another. From the night of the derailment until June, they spent more than $12,000 in lodging; Norfolk Southern eventually reimbursed them $8,500.

Nathan was outspoken and a good storyteller, so reporters sought him out. He was interviewed a number of times on local and national news programs. For a while, he kept track of the interviews but stopped counting after a few dozen.

One day, he finished an interview with Fox News then headed to an Airbnb that was then serving as a home. He was scheduled to do another interview that evening on CNN. During the trip home, Nathan’s heart began racing. Sweat poured down his face. His hands wouldn’t work.

“Holy shit, I’m having a heart attack,” he thought. He pulled into the Airbnb driveway and called Nicole. “I think I’m dying,” he said.

Nicole rushed outside, and her training as a nurse kicked in. “Babe, you’re having a panic attack,” she said. She calmed him down. He texted CNN staffers and let them know what was happening. “I’m running on fumes,” he wrote. He ended up doing the interview, believing the world needed to see what people in East Palestine were dealing with.

The most terrifying event to strike the Velez family occurred one day in March. Nathan was at the shop doing yet another interview when son Troy called. “Cam ate something,” he said. Nathan could hear Nicole screaming in the background. “You need to get here now!” she said.

It took Nathan 20 minutes to drive to the family’s Airbnb in Poland, on the outskirts of Youngstown. He ran inside. Nicole held Cambria, who was beet red and convulsing. Cam had ingested medicine not intended for children. It all happened so quickly. Nathan called 911, and within minutes an ambulance arrived and took Cam to a local hospital. Doctors tried to calm her heart rate with medication, but it didn’t work. So she was transferred to Akron Children’s Hospital.

Nathan and Nicole spent that night in a hospital waiting room while doctors stabilized their daughter. Cambria remained in the hospital for a week.

“This almost completely wrecked us,” Nathan later said. ​​The stress and chaos of moving from one rental place to another was becoming too much. All the packing and unpacking. At their East Palestine home, everything had its place. Now, nothing had a place. “This only happened because we weren’t in our own home,” Nathan said.

Losing more than a home

The Millers’ home on East Clark is a narrow two-story wood structure with an American flag flying from a pole on the front porch. East Clark is lined with similar homes, modest aging structures that have been carefully maintained.

Inside, the house is cozy, the rooms decorated with antiques and collectibles: old muffin trays and rolling pins in the kitchen, vintage tins for baking soda and other cooking staples, Coca-Cola crates, classic print ads for Lionel model trains. The Millers raised their son, Austin, here and had planned on passing the house to him when they retired and possibly moved south, perhaps to the Carolinas or Florida. That won’t happen.

In the months after the derailment, Lonnie and Dave put the house on the market. They’d taken out another mortgage to purchase a house in Leetonia, a small Ohio town about 15 miles west. 

Losing the house broke Lonnie’s heart. After nearly 30 years, the place was filled with memories and markers of life, such as the pencil lines on a wall that tracked Austin’s growth. He was 5 months old when Dave built a garage — Austin’s footprints are imprinted in the concrete floor.

But Lonnie and Dave felt they had no choice. They could no longer trust East Clark Street to be safe.

For Lonnie the decision was especially difficult because the house represented a special connection to her father, Larry Davis.

On Sunday afternoon, Oct. 8, 2006, Lonnie’s parents were traveling along Route 551 in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, east of New Castle, when their pickup was struck by a vehicle that had run a stop sign. Three teenagers in the vehicle died, and Lonnie’s father received serious injuries. A medical helicopter transported him to a hospital in Youngstown, where he spent much of the next several weeks in a coma.

Larry Davis regained consciousness a few times and always asked about his grandson Austin, then 4. “They were best of friends,” Lonnie said. “I made my dad a promise in the hospital to do everything I can to make his grandson safe.”

Larry Davis died of his injuries in late January 2007. As a result of a settlement, Lonnie and Dave were able to pay off their home. Lonnie felt that was her father’s final gift to her. A home was something he was never able to provide for his wife. Larry Davis worked as head of maintenance at a local factory. He could fix anything, and he was a hard worker. Lonnie has pictures of him, exhausted after his shift and asleep on a couch. But he never made much money.

“I watched Dad struggle for years and years, trying to provide for my mom and my sister and I,” Lonnie said. “We lived in a trailer, a mobile home, and he regretted that. He wished he could have built my mom a beautiful house.”

In death, he was able to provide a house for his daughter. Now, Lonnie had to part with that gift. “I feel like I’m losing my dad all over again,” she said.

‘We couldn’t make it’

The Millers’ new place in Leetonia needed a lot of work. Interior walls were punctured by holes; junk filled the rooms. Lonnie knows antiques and collectibles, and the only thing of value she found was a lamp worth about $50. Mice infested the place. Racoon droppings littered the floor.

Outside, the yard was littered with trash — everything from toothpaste tubes to pantyhose. While cleaning up the property, the Millers filled two dumpsters with debris. The house needed a roof and electrical work. But at least it was safe, and it was nowhere near a railroad track.

By October, the family had moved out of the East Clark Street home and were staying at the Leetonia house. Lonnie enjoyed watching Dave and Austin work together to fix it up. Lonnie emptied out her Market Street antiques store, Mama’s Attic. She’d decided long before to close the business, although owning the shop had been a dream of hers. So much had changed in the town. It wasn’t just the chemicals. The derailment had created divisions in the community, in many cases turning friends and neighbors against each other. To Lonnie, it was unbearable.

Lonnie cleaned up the East Palestine house and put it on the market, something that would have been inconceivable a year ago. All of those things that made the house special had been poisoned. “If I had the money, I would tear it down myself,” Lonnie said. “I wouldn’t even ask for a permit.”

Deane and Debbie Cope moved back into their East Clark Street house after staying 11 days with their friend in Unity Township. Debbie still worried that air inside the house could be hazardous, so the couple requested testing. A few men stopped by and used hand-held devices to sample the air in several places. Results revealed no hazards. Months later, though, the Copes saw news reports that indicated the testing devices were faulty. Now they don’t know what to believe.

The house has been a thread connecting Deane to his family’s past. His great-aunt lived there decades ago. As a child, Deane cut the grass in the summer and in the winter shoveled snow off the sidewalk. In 1984, he and Debbie were married in the living room. It’s the only place the couple ever owned.

“We’re not living like kings, but our needs are met here,” Deane said. He would like to stay in the house, but he’s concerned for Debbie’s health. She’d like to leave, but the couple can’t afford to move. They live on Social Security benefits and Deane’s small pension. The 2008 financial crisis wiped out their 401(k). 

“If we had to go someplace and pay rent or a house payment, we couldn’t make it,” Deane said. The couple found a place in nearby New Waterford that would suit their needs — it was a ranch home with a garage. The price: approximately $170,000, much more than the Copes can afford.

“We’ll never get that out of this place,” Deane said while sitting in his living room in January. Who wants to buy a house a hundred feet from a railroad track, especially one in a town now known for a toxic derailment? “We’re stuck.”

Frustrations and feathers

In the weeks after the derailment, Bob Figley grew increasingly frustrated with the response by government agencies and by Norfolk Southern.

After the burn-off, some residents grew concerned about dioxin, a highly toxic pollutant created by burning vinyl chloride. Dioxin is known to cause cancer. But the EPA didn’t test East Palestine soil for dioxin until weeks after the burn-off. Those tests found the levels to be normal, or what would be expected in any community, but independent tests discovered much higher levels. Who was right? 

Bob wondered whose side the EPA was on. “Are they the Environmental Protection Agency or the Empire Protection Agency?” he asked. It bothered him that after the derailment Norfolk Southern “took over” a portion of the town without consulting the business owners whose property was directly affected by the disaster. It felt like big businesses and institutions were pushing people around.

What’s the future for him and Marilyn, and for his business? Bob grew up in East Palestine; he’s not going anywhere. His store, Brushville Supply, has been at its current location on East Taggart for 20 years.

“Where am I going to go?” Bob asked. “Everything’s here. We’ve got 30 acres, a house, barns, maple trees. That’s our retirement home. Do I want to start my life over somewhere? If there was something here that was going to kill us in a year, then, yeah, I’d leave. But we just don’t know.”

In the months after the derailment, he and Marilyn lived in a number of rental places. They were concerned about toxins in their home. “We lived out of suitcases for five months,” Bob said. Eventually, the railroad paid to have their home cleaned and the interior rooms painted, something the couple felt they needed to do in order to make the place safe.

Bob was told by the EPA his business needed to be cleaned, a monumental task in a place packed with thousands of tools, fittings, hoses, connectors and other items. He spent a lot of time getting estimates, coming up with a plan. Then he was told the cleaning was voluntary and would have to be done by a separate company. Such interactions leave people confused — is there a hazard that needs to be removed or not?

Bob wants the railroad company as well as government agencies to “come in and be straightforward and tell us the truth. Come in here and be responsible and take care of the mess you made.”

Like the Miller family, Nathan and Nicole Velez decided to look for a new place to live. By April, their home on East North Street had been vacant for nearly three months after being exposed to whatever chemicals had been released into the air during and after the derailment. 

Nathan spent months traveling to the East Palestine house, packing the family’s belongings into plastic bins and then renovating the place — finishing a bathroom project he’d started before the derailment, repairing floors, replacing a ceiling, painting the interior walls. He and Nicole found a house they liked in New Waterford, and their offer was accepted. All of this proved costly. Nathan sold his beloved El Camino and drained money from his business, which remained closed to regular business until summer.

By November, Nathan and Nicole had sold their place at 327 East North St. One of the last items remaining in the house was a calendar that had hung for years in the family’s kitchen. It was Nicole’s habit to draw a line through the current day before she went to bed at night. The first and second days of February 2023 are marked off — those turned out to be the last days the family would spend in the house.

“So long, 327,” Nathan wrote in a Facebook post. “You were a great first house.”

Once his family’s move from East Palestine was complete, Nathan contemplated the future of his shop, located in a one-story shed packed with tools, engines, motorcycles and ATVs. Should the business remain on East Taggart Street? The chemical odors had dissipated, but what about other forms of contamination? Sulfur Run, which some residents feared was still polluted, flowed past the back door. Nathan had much to figure out.

After the derailment, as he and his family navigated various crises, Nathan began writing about his experiences. His entries were at times achingly personal and often reflective. In the fall of 2023, he wrote about the lessons he’d learned since returning Steven’s phone call on the frigid Friday evening of Feb. 3. 

“No one is coming to save you,” he wrote. “The government, the railroad, the lawyers, no one. Whatever it is you wish would happen probably won’t. Not unless you shut up and do it yourself.”

In the early spring, Lonnie found feathers on the ground while taking her dogs for walks around her East Palestine neighborhood. She’s a spiritual person and considered these signs from angels telling her she and her family would be safe. Then a friend in nearby West Virginia told her she’d found dead birds in her yard after the burn-off. Now Lonnie thinks those feathers may have been from birds who’d flown through airborne chemicals.

Other things Lonnie once considered real turned out to be illusions. Friendships she thought were resilient fell apart over disagreements about the derailment and its aftermath. She looked at the home that once protected her and wondered if it harbored invisible hazards. Even the signs posted around the village — “EP Strong” — seemed to tell a lie. Neighbors and friends had turned on each other.

Eleven months after the derailment, Lonnie’s nightmares remained, but she no longer woke up screaming. Counseling proved a big help. The East Clark Street house had been on the market for weeks, but no potential buyers had emerged. Still, Lonnie and Dave were relieved to be in Leetonia. “We’re getting away from the threat, and this is the best we can do,” Lonnie said.

The place came with more than 2 acres, so the dogs had room to run. And perhaps its most important amenity: no nearby railroad traffic to rattle the house or nerves. Quiet dominates the landscape. Still, if Lonnie walks to the edge of the property and listens carefully, she can hear it in the distance, perhaps carried by the wind: the sound of a train, blaring its warning.

This story is part of collaborative coverage of East Palestine between the Pittsburgh Union Progress and the New Castle News, funded in part by a grant from the Pittsburgh Media Partnership.

The post On a frigid and fiery night one year ago, a train upended lives in East Palestine appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Update (11/9/23): Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor announced that his office will begin an audit of the county’s Clean Air Fund.

“Our aim with this audit is to ensure that uses of the Clean Air Fund are in compliance with the law and these funds are available for projects designed to improve air quality and public health,” O’Connor said in a press release. “We must ensure there is transparency and accountability for how our County distributes these funds.”

O’Connor’s office said the audit “will examine whether uses of the fund have complied with the purposes for which it was established, the process by which community organizations apply for and are awarded grants from the fund, the extent to which ACHD has obtained input from affected communities regarding use of the Fund’s resources,” among other inquiries.

Allegheny County Board of Health sends bid to tap Clean Air Fund to public comment phase

Update (3/22/23): The Allegheny County Board of Health voted to advance the proposal to tap the Clean Air Fund for more support for the Air Quality Program to an extended public comment phase. Public comment will be followed by another consideration by the Air Pollution Control Advisory Committee.

During the meeting, numerous environmental advocacy organizations, including the Breathe Project, the Group Against Smog and Pollution [GASP], Valley Clean Air Now, Clean Air Council and PennEnvironment spoke in opposition to the proposal. 

Reported 3/20/23: The Allegheny County Health Department’s Air Quality Program is seeking unprecedented access to the Clean Air Fund, a coffer of nearly $10 million earmarked largely for community-based projects that address Allegheny County’s chronic air quality issues.

During a special meeting of the Air Pollution Control Advisory Committee on March 13, County Manager Jennifer Liptak painted an urgent portrait of a department experiencing fiscal turbulence.

“If we continue down this road, we’re going to continue to have a deficit until we figure out how to make this program more efficient,” she said.

The meeting was the ninth in a lengthy and contentious debate over a proposal to increase the portion of the fund that the Air Quality Program may use for its operating expenses. The program, which oversees monitoring and enforcement of air pollution regulations, has been allowed to use up to 5% of the Clean Air Fund balance to pay for its operations. Now the department seeks a five-fold bump — up to 25% — of monies that could otherwise be used to fund community projects.

Over the past several months, the committee expressed doubts about the proposal, with many members questioning whether the move is an appropriate use of funds, and whether it is financially justified. 

“The substantial change should not be taken lightly,” said Mark Jeffrey, U.S. Steel’s representative on the committee, on March 13. “At the end of the day, we want the money to go back to communities. We want to improve air quality in Allegheny County. And this is going to take a dent out of it one way or the other.”

A motion to send the proposal to the Board of Health passed the committee by an 8-4 vote. The board on Wednesday will decide whether to send the proposal to the next stage: public comment. The board shot down a previous iteration of the proposal in January, which was brought to a vote without the committee’s blessing. 

The latest push adds to the debate over who should have access to the fund and for what purposes. The process also raises questions of how to appropriately support a county air program with dwindling revenue that is struggling to stay in the black.

After PublicSource inquiries, County Controller Corey O’Connor pledged to audit the Clean Air Fund this year, saying that had not been previously done.

Changing the Clean Air Fund? 

The Clean Air Fund contains nearly $10 million in fines and penalties paid by polluters in Allegheny County, and it continues to receive money each year as violations persist. 

Per county law, the fund is intended “solely to support activities related to the improvement of air quality within Allegheny County and to support activities which will increase or improve knowledge concerning air pollution, its causes, its effects, and the control thereof.” As is, the Air Quality Program may draw up to 5% of the fund balance each year for operating costs.

The Air Quality Program is made up of about 45 engineers, analysts and inspectors, and is responsible for monitoring air pollution in Allegheny County, permitting for major polluters and enforcing air quality regulations.

Under the new proposal, the Air Quality Program’s slice of pollution-penalty pie would grow five times to 25% of the Clean Air Fund’s balance, with an annual cap of $1.25 million and a clause that says the stopgap measure would sunset after four years. After that, the Air Quality Program would again be limited to drawing 5% of the Clean Air Fund. 

The Air Quality Program has drawn the full 5% from the fund to cover operating expenses per the regulation each year since at least 2016 — typically around $500,000 to $600,000.

Since 2019, the program received nearly $2.1 million from the Clean Air Fund for operating expenses, 44% of the total Clean Air Fund expenditures, according to data from the county controller’s office. 

The Health Department also used $70,065 in Clean Air Fund dollars to cover temporary staffing expenses, and $121,290 for air quality permitting and enforcement software, according to contracts. In 2017, $500,000 was transferred from the Clean Air Fund to pay for renovations for a Health Department building in Lawrenceville. 

A precarious Air Quality Program

Financials show 2023 as an inflection point: The Air Quality Program faces a projected $760,000 deficit this year. Liptak, along with acting Health Department Director Patrick Dowd and Deputy of Environmental Health Geoff Rabinowitz, said the proposal to draw more from the Clean Air Fund is a way to cover the difference, and would be a stopgap measure as the program seeks to hire a full staff and figure out how to right the ship.

“The program has to be functional,” Rabinowitz told the Air Pollution Control Advisory Committee at a meeting in January. “This is not a situation that is tenable in perpetuity.

“There is a sense of urgency here, and I hope you hear that in my voice.”

From the county’s perspective, the Clean Air Fund is a viable and available avenue to keep the Air Quality Program functional without dipping into the county’s general fund, which was used to cover a $481,000 deficit in 2022. “That’s not good,” said Liptak.

“The general fund is the property tax dollars for the citizens of Allegheny County,” she said. “That’s the last resort.”

The Air Quality Program does not usually rely on the county general fund to finance its staff like many other departments do. Instead, the program has historically relied on grant funding and a variety of fees collected from industrial emitters.

The closure of large industrial facilities like the Shenango Coke Works on Neville Island in 2016 and the Cheswick Generating Station in 2022 were by all accounts boosts to the county’s air quality, but the facilities were also longtime sources of revenue for the Air Quality Program. 

EPA grants have also been unreliable, said Rabinowitz. In addition, U.S. Steel is currently appealing $6.4 million in penalties, and those funds are held in an escrow account until litigation is resolved. A portion of those funds, if secured, would help to replenish the Clean Air Fund, Liptak said.

Diverting money meant for communities?

The Clean Air Fund is “meant to be utilized predominantly for supporting educational programs or direct projects that reduce air quality emission or improve air quality in fenceline environmental justice communities,” said Steve Hvozdovich, a committee member and state campaigns director for Clean Water Action. “That's not how that's going to be utilized over the course of these next four years of this process if this is adopted.”

Under the new proposal, the Clean Air Fund could be drained by the time the new regulation phases out, Hvozdovich said. 

“If you do the math,” he said, based on the county manager’s projection, “you're going to drain the Clean Air Fund by the end of 2026 by 75%. I'd be fine with that if the bulk of that was going to the community. But it's not. It's being split essentially almost evenly between the operating expenses of the Air Quality Program and the public. And I just don't think that's the right use of those funds.”

O’Connor, the county’s independent fiscal watchdog, questioned whether a regulation change that spans four years is the right path, particularly given the opportunity for a new county executive to have a hand in deciding the funding future of the program, once elected. 

O’Connor suggested that the Health Department consider increasing fines for polluters to bolster the budget, or resort to the county general fund to cover personnel.

“If this is a one-time hit just to get through for a couple of months, that's a different conversation than a four-year plan,” he said. “If you look at a four-year long-term plan, the fund is going to be dwindling. The money is supposed to go towards communities that want to use this fund for environmental purposes."

Questions of accessibility and proper use of funds

Thaddeus Popovich, who co-founded Allegheny County Clean Air Now [ACCAN] in 2014, addressed the committee, ACHD leadership and the county manager last week. 

“Since 2020, ACCAN has been asking the department to conduct a comprehensive air toxics and odor study in the Neville Island area, like the one they did in the Mon Valley,” he said. “The study would provide important information that could help the Health Department to better regulate industries in this airshed, which could better protect the health of residents in our communities.”

Miles away in Clairton, Valley Clean Air Now [VCAN] has for years attempted to access the fund to purchase home air filters for residents, with no success.

“There was no way to apply to the fund,” said Myron Arnowitt, who led efforts to secure air filter funding for VCAN. “And there still isn’t.”

The department is supposed to issue requests for proposals [RFPs] for Clean Air Fund funding, but community groups like VCAN and ACCAN say those are few and far between, with no opportunities to access funding in the interim. 

The county manager projected that $2 million in Clean Air Fund money will be spent on projects this year — more than what was spent on projects from the fund across the last three years combined — followed by $1 million for each year through 2027. 

But the Health Department hasn’t issued an RFP “in ages,” Hvozdovich said. 

The Health Department did not respond by deadline to PublicSource’s request for information on the timing of any recent RFPs for Clean Air Fund allocations. The department has yet to announce criteria for the $2 million the manager projected would soon be up for grabs.

“Why are we not spending the money every year?” O’Connor questioned. The fund has carried a balance roughly between $10 million and $12 million since 2016. “These are capital expenditures that we can be spending with community groups.” 

Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on Twitter and Instagram @quinnglabicki.

This story was fact-checked by Dakota Castro-Jarrett.

The post Updated: Audit of Allegheny County Clean Air Fund beginning appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

In this episode, five Pittsburgh high school students from Girl Scout Troop 55286 discuss the uncomfortable truths about climate change and environmental justice activism for teens — and how their peers and parents can help raise awareness.

TRANSCRIPT 

Jourdan Hicks: They could be recycling your Christmas tree right now. Or perhaps researching the link between palm oil extraction and trefoil cookies. But on one recent wintry day, five Pittsburgh High School students who make up Troop 55286 sat with me to discuss the urgency of climate change in their teen lives and for their future. At the Carnegie Library-East Liberty Branch, Amalia, Lucy, Lilliana, Quill and Grace are environmental activists. They act in defense of the resources on planet Earth that impact your quality of life. 

Jourdan: I’m Jourdan Hicks and this is From the Source. Most of these young people have had a close relationship with environmental concepts and climate justice conversations since they were kids. 

Quill Boyle: I’m Quill. I go to Obama and I’m in 11th grade. Something that partially got me into it is just my dad. He’s a big environmental activist. Both my parents are big activists. I think he was like one of the people who started the CCL chapter, Citizen’s Climate Lobby. He just has talked about climate change a lot, so it’s just kind of like something that was partially there growing up. I think climate justice is like trying to keep our planet alive and making sure that everything that is in danger is safe. 

Jourdan: Quill volunteers with two environmental justice groups, Pittsburgh Youth Climate Action and the Pittsburgh Youth Climate Coalition. 

Quill: This year it’s definitely a lot more youth leading the group conversation and getting stuff happening a little bit more. It was made by students for students. It’s mainly like connecting each environmental club in high schools, mainly to like, kind of like work together and create a space to support each other in the things that we’re doing as schools. To create a protest in Pittsburgh, to make sure that we were holding those officials accountable and stuff. 

Grace Glowczewski: I’m Grace. I go to CAPA and I’m a senior. I definitely got into environmental justice because of my parents, especially my mom. I’ve always been vegetarian not only because I’m sad about animals, but because it’s so bad for the environment. 

Jourdan: Grace’s mom, Elizabeth, is the group’s leader. 

Grace: So like every decision that my mom has made has been so conscious and good about being environmentalists on all fronts, like the personal front and the lobbying and everything about that. And also Girl Scouts, like we’ve been just taught to love our Earth so much. Like we go on hikes and, and like that has just been so ingrained into my childhood and like who I am. The Earth means a lot to me on a personal level. So that means like I will go to lengths to protect it. As youth, this is a particularly important issue because we are the most affected by it, but we have the least say in it. We are not able to go into Congress and make laws. We are not able to vote, most of us. We’re not able to buy our own groceries and make sure we’re getting organic foods. We’re not able to put solar panels on our bodies. Like we are only able to have conversations and educate ourselves. And I feel like as we get older, it’s our responsibility to educate younger people. 

Lilliana Watling: I’m Lilliana. I go to City of Bridges and I’m in 12th grade. I guess in a nutshell, it’s just like you’re defending the environment because the people that are in charge of the laws that are being made in the world that we live in don’t really seem to think about the fact that if they make the mistakes or like the decisions that they continue to make and they act like basically like the world is this kind of like stress ball that they can just squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and it will just go back to normal — that’s not how it works. Like the more that you kind of, I guess, squeeze the earth for its resources, those resources will not come back and there will be consequences that, like, we cannot come back from, and environmental justice is people just trying to make that known and trying to get people to listen to us, basically. 

Lucy Stewart: I’m Lucy. I’m in 11th grade and I go to City of Bridges high school. A big part of environmental justice is holding massive corporate polluters responsible. We have a history of that in Pittsburgh. It is possible just looking at Pittsburgh’s history. So yeah, a big point for me in environmental justice is that holding corporate polluters responsible. 

Grace: As a Girl Scout troop, basically we decided that we felt uncomfortable selling Girl Scout cookies because they had palm oil in them that were from an unsustainable source. And palm oil is a huge reason why deforestation happens in the Amazon. And we were originally concerned about orangutan lives, but not only orangutans are being affected by it. So it seems like a huge issue. Like we went to Girl Scouts and we were like, this is something we are not comfortable supporting, but instead of just deciding not to sell, that would make a very small impact. But we went to Girl Scouts and we were like: This is the problem. Like this is the solution. And like, we want to see change. 

And although nothing has actually happened yet, there are still people, like we mobilized Girl Scouts around the country and kind of got the issue out there, proposed a solution. So we’re creating sustainable change. 

Jourdan: Still, the challenge of climate change feels monumental when you are 16, 17, 18 years old and staring down a future of rising sea levels and extreme weather. 

Lilliana: With environmental justice, it definitely feels like there’s not a lot you can do. And even with, like, letter-writing and protest, it still doesn’t feel like there’s a lot that you can do or like a lot that you can actually accomplish. Which isn’t fun for sure, but all you can do in trying to be an environmental activist is do your best. I think something that a lot of people end up focusing on is like, oh, if you do, if you stop littering and throw your trash away or if you start recycling and being conscious about that, then you’re going to make a big difference when it’s like, oh, that’s only one person, and we shouldn’t really be shaming people for choices that it might be their only choice in order to do that. Like. It’s definitely not an individual issue. But like companies, companies and policy-makers need to be better about what they’re doing. Something that we can do is try our best to influence those companies and lawmakers. 

Jourdan: When teens think about climate change, they feel anxious, afraid and helpless. That’s according to an EdWeek Research Center survey published in December, where teens were presented with a list of 11 emotions ranging from angry to optimistic to uninterested and asked  to select all the emotions they associate with climate change and the effects. Lilliana says with everything else going on in the world, teens have to compartmentalize. 

Lilliana: So that you’re not thinking about it 24/7 because a lot of times what I think will happen is that people will hear about this issue and they’ll get so bogged down by it that they just won’t even try and look at all that. There’s nothing I can do, so why do anything at all. So it’s one of those things where it’s you have to able to think about it, but it cannot eat up all of your day because then you’ll just end up being, like, really sad and like, I don’t know, it’s like, it’s not productive. Your depression is not productive. So simply smile. 

Amalia: I agree with Lilliana in saying that what people are saying is that a lot of the responsibility for where our environment is at now is like big companies and corporations. And then when you are an individual, it feels like you can’t do anything. But instead of just kind of leaving it up to them, unfortunately, it’s kind of you have to take matters into your own hands and not by yourself. Also, the greatest thing with the palm oil, we were able to start a group and talk to people around the world. And so, like changing your toothbrush might not be that big of a change personally, but it’s like if a lot of people do that or if a lot of people are aware of an alternative or choose an alternative, it makes a larger impact and then corporations will notice more. 

Jourdan: I feel like we’re all complicit in something like, I don’t know where this T-shirt was made. I got it at Target. I feel like, I don’t know, Target. I don’t know if it was sourced sustainably or not. I have no clue. 

Lucy: We all have, I think, big opinions on this topic specifically about fashion and what it is like. I think that I think the biggest thing is like not about, like, where you’re consuming from, but how much you are consuming. Like back to the thing where, like, people were buying from things like that that fit their lifestyle, it fits their budget. There’s a lot of classism, I think, in environmental justice and  I think the thing to look at is like how much you’re consuming, I guess more where you’re buying from.

Amalia: I kind of disagree with you. I mean, I agree with the like how much you’re consuming and the amount is definitely an issue. But I think you’re right. It’s like a very classist issue. And people who can afford cheap high end if that’s where they can get a lot of clothing, that’s where they want to buy, right? And then rich people can buy from brands where they have clothing that lasts longer. See, they’re not throwing it away, but it’s not available to everyone. Then it seems like I can’t afford like a really nice, sustainable brand because the shirt is $200 and it’s just like a cycle. So I’m not really sure how. 

Lilliana: And I think of people like Gwyneth Paltrow who are very like, oh, like I am this like hippie of the Earth, like I love crystals and like, I would never hurt the Earth when it’s like you’re literally charging like $60 for, like, products that, l don’t know how you source them, but like it’s a little bit like it’s good that there are these people who are like saying online, like, oh, I support this issue, but most of the time there isn’t any action behind that and they’re getting like a lot of credit and it’s good because like people are more aware of it, but it’s also like the people that should be at the head of this should be the people that are actually like doing things, making changes, and that are also showing other people how they can make change in a way that is more realistic for their lives, if that makes sense. 

Amalia: The way we find our views is on our social media and through political ads. I think that’s a very skewed way of looking at it. 

Lucy: Yes. 

Amalia: And kind of you’re fed opinions. I think the way we should do it is that we learn these things and then create a community of it. 

Lucy: I completely agree because I think social media and like TikTok and like other short-form content, it does not allow us to think critically enough about this stuff. 

Lilliana: What Lucy and Amalia were saying, is TikTok and Instagram, like, they are good for raising awareness, but it’s not really the best for educating you about like certain issues because it is a lot of, ‘The world is going to end in like two years type of stuff.’ A lot of the stuff that is posted on TikTok and Instagram about climate change is definitely useful and I like follow accounts that talk about it, but I think it’s also one of those things where it is more base level and it’s for people who are just beginning. I think there’s like, as you continue going, you learn that like this is a very multifaceted issue. There are a lot of things going on. It’s one of those things where it’s very easy for brands and people like that to be like, oh yeah, we’re for environmental justice. They’ll say things, and it’s like oh, this is great. I can support them now, but you have to also like being in, like doing work and being in environmental justice. It does take quite a bit of time because you do have to do research on certain things and like where you’re getting like certain things from and like that is a hard thing to do and it takes a lot of time. 

Amalia: I think we have this kind of view on climate justice and climate change as a very opinionated and political thing where it has a [political] party or whatever. Media you consume, you get a certain view on climate change or whatever party you associate with or like city you live in, you have this view of climate change. I think educating is such an important thing when it comes to making people feel empathetic for other people. Even just having a class about how it affects other people would be so helpful because then you’re not forcing yourself to consume it, but you have to do that in an education curriculum. It teaches people about it instead of making them search it out for themselves. 

Lilliana: Can I just say something really quickly? So, at Obama, I don’t want to name the teacher, so I’m not gonna. There is a science teacher at our school who does not believe in climate change. He’s a science teacher. 

Grace: As we get older, it’s our responsibility to educate younger people and I’m seeing like my teachers are starting like they’re coming into the generation where they’re educated. Like my government teacher had us learn about the ways to sue the government. We watched a documentary on these 21 plaintiffs suing the government. We learn so much about the government, but we also learned so much about environmental justice. That wasn’t the point of the lesson, but everyone in that room walked away with a new, like, perspective. So any type of education and conversation that we can have with our peers or with our teachers or with our parents, that is the biggest impact we can currently have. 

Lilliana: I know with my parents, like I talk with them and I have like conversations with them, and if they were just sitting me down like telling me like, you need to care about this… The adults need to be open to hearing what kids have to say because it’s this thing that happens a lot where it’s like the people will be like, oh, we’re like, if you’re like worried about this, you should be doing something to change it. But then when we bring it up and we talk about it, they’re like, oh, you’re young, you don’t know what you’re talking about. So it’s this like if you want to be able to talk to younger generations or just like your own kid about what’s going on, you have to treat them with respect and like it’s a discussion and it’s not a lecture. 

Quill: I think with conversations between peers or like people maybe who are like older than you, but you’re talking to them about climate change, I think that it’s a very difficult conversation to have no matter who’s having it because it’s hard to convince someone. Oh, yeah. There’s unfortunately not a lot we can do, but you kind of have to try. It’s very hard to talk about climate change, like explaining it in, like, a personal way to someone when most of the personal ways are very discouraging. Like, it’s like if one way that you can connect with someone is that you know that they really like chocolate, for example, like this is a kind of a silly example, but also kind of not like because of climate change, I believe like chocolate might not be around Depending on like certain stages of climate change, I guess. So it’s just kind of like, oh yeah, chocolate won’t be around in a couple of years. Do you want to try to do something about it? It’s hard to connect with people when talking about climate change and they think like I don’t know the best way to talk to someone about it, but maybe just talking about the ways that you’re passionate about it. It’s hard to make it relevant to someone when the only relevant way is bad ways or like bad things that are going to happen. 

Jourdan: After my interview with Troop 55286, I walked away with the following:

Climate change is going to climate change. As long as there’s corporate-level reliance on the extraction and burning off of fossil fuels, we’re going to continue to see long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns.

Having individual eco-friendly habits like recycling, turning off the lights when you’re not in a room, conserving energy, biking instead of driving — they’re helpful but not super impactful against the effects of global pollution, deforestation and CO2 production.

Jourdan: Environmental justice is a personal commitment to being woke about your personal contributions to climate change and facing the reality that people and companies not observing the needs of the environment are doing the most harm and making it harder for personal efforts to matter. It’s about sticking with it even in the face of future predictions for our planet.

There are countless organizations in our region who want to engage the public on issues of environmental justice, teens and adults. There’s Communitopia, Tree Pittsburgh, Green Building Alliance, Pittsburgh Youth Climate Action and Pittsburgh Youth Climate Coalition.

Parents can do their part by starting the conversation early. All the scouts were introduced to environmental justice at a young age and exposed as kids to what it meant to have a kind relationship with the planet and with the animals we share the planet with.

Doing so could set them up to be more conscious about environmentalism as they become adults.

Season four of From The Source Podcast is produced, reported and hosted by me, Jourdan Hicks. Halle Stockton is our editor-in-chief. Story editing, sound design and mixing by Liz Reid of Jeweltone Productions.

We continue to interview young people for the podcast as we speak. If you’re curious to learn how you can share your story with us, or nominate a young person, ages 13 to 18 to appear on an episode of From the Source, you can get in touch with me by sending me an email to jourdan@publicsource.org.

PublicSource is an independent nonprofit newsroom in Pittsburgh, Pa. You can find all of our reporting and storytelling at Publicsource.org. 

I’m Jourdan Hicks. Stay safe. Be well.

The post <strong>Teens fighting for a livable planet | S4, Ep. 6</strong> appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

We’re back in 2023! Here’s a preview of the next episode of From the Source.

TRANSCRIPT

Jourdan: Welcome to From the Source. I’m your podcast host, Jourdan Hicks. We’re taking a break to observe the holiday season, so there won’t be a new episode this week. You can check out past episodes from this season on PublicSource.org and Kidsburgh.org, and it’s also streaming on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. We’re back Wednesday, Jan. 4. 

Next time on From the Source, Episode 6: 

Quill: There is a science teacher at our school who does not believe in climate change. He’s a science teacher. 

Jourdan: Scouts from Troop 55286 share how they became teen climate activists and why more teens aren’t engaged with environmental justice issues. 

Lucy: We are the most affected by it, but we have the least say in it. Like we are not able to go into Congress and make laws. We are not able to vote. Most of us were not able to put solar panels on our roofs. We are only able to have conversations and educate ourselves, and I feel like as we get older, it’s our responsibility to educate younger people. 

Quill: It’s hard to make it relevant to someone when the only relevant way is bad ways or like bad things that are going to happen. 

Liliana: Like, the people that are in charge of the laws that are being made act like basically like the world is this, like, stress ball that they can just squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and it will just go back to normal.

The post Teens Fighting for a Livable Planet | S4, Ep 6. Preview appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

PublicSource asked the state Department of Environmental Protection about its plans for monitoring Shell’s new Potter Township petrochemical cracker. Here are the basics, per DEP Community Relations Coordinator Lauren Camarda.

Shell is required to monitor the plant’s emissions daily, according to Camarda. The company must also report all emergencies and malfunctions that add to emissions and fix leaking pipes, valves and other components. If Shell doesn’t fulfill its responsibilities, it could face legal sanctions.

The company’s pollution monitoring equipment must be tested and calibrated by a third party, and the data supplied to DEP, which reviews and approves them. 

That said, the agency won’t rely on the company.

“DEP expects that its representatives will frequently be on site at the Shell facility to evaluate air quality,” according to Camarda. Federal guidance allows DEP to take as much as three years to complete full compliance inspections of facilities the size of the cracker plant, as long as it conducts frequent on-site “partial compliance evaluation” visits, she wrote.

DEP already has air monitoring stations in Beaver Falls, Beaver Valley, Brighton Township, Hookstown, Potter Township and Vanport, and plans to place one in Beaver Borough. The agency monitors for pollutants listed in the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards and some monitors also capture air toxics and volatile organic compounds. Data from DEP monitors statewide is available here.

Where do average citizens fit in?

DEP responds to every complaint it receives, but won’t necessarily see something posted on social media. The agency urges citizens who see environmental concerns or pollution events to capture the date, time, location and description, plus photos or video if possible, and promptly call the regional office at 412-442-4000, use the toll-free number 866-255-5158 or report via its website. 

Complaints, she wrote, “may also result in partial inspections, and DEP has the authority to physically inspect the facility at any time,” or to demand Shell’s records.

While DEP is aware of “increased interest” in citizen data collection, it must follow state and federal rules when pursuing enforcement actions, and those require “rigorous quality assurance/quality control requirements,” according to Camarda. The agency is also awaiting findings from a variety of federal citizen science initiatives.

Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on twitter and instagram @quinnglabicki.

Rich Lord is PublicSource’s managing editor. He can be reached at rich@publicsource.org or on Twitter @richelord.

The post Who monitors Shell’s cracker plant — and how? The DEP makes its case appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Clifford Lau sat low against the wind as Captain Evan Clark’s 16-foot skiff sped along the southern shoreline of the Ohio River. Beneath steely spires and a towering webwork of pipes, valves and flashing lights, an outfall came into view. A steady stream of water poured out of a pipe beneath Shell’s new petrochemical plant and onto a rocky shore encircled by an orange plastic buffer. 

As Clark steered the skiff closer on Oct. 27, an acrid scent wafted off of the river’s surface. “There it is,” said Clark, who had noticed the odor earlier that morning. “Can you smell it?” Orange and yellow leaves lapped against the hull as the small boat drifted to the edge of the outfall and Lau, a chemist, stood to prepare his equipment. 

“Oh yes,” Lau replied. They couldn’t be quite sure what it was. A solvent, perhaps? It warranted further investigation.

The chemist lifted the lid off of a large, clear plastic bucket and fixed a bag to a valve on the underside. He attached a tube to the top and extended it across the bow and toward the water’s surface. The bag began to inflate, capturing an air sample that would later be tested for contaminants.

In Beaver County, as Shell’s hulking petrochemical plant slowly scales toward full capacity, a growing network of local citizens is doggedly watching the facility. Among the communities surrounding the cracker plant, as it’s known, residents are organizing to keep tabs on their new industrial neighbor. Some are installing air monitors and cameras on their homes, and others are gathering samples from the water’s edge. Many are documenting their experiences and observations as the plant spurs changes to their neighborhoods.

The cracker’s construction was completed earlier this year. It produces plastic pellets no larger than a lentil by converting, or ‘cracking,’ ethane sourced from nearby fracking operations into polyethylene — the building blocks of single-use and other plastics. It occupies about 800 acres along the southern shore of the Ohio in Potter Township. When production reaches capacity, the cracker will produce up to 1.6 million metric tons of plastics each year and will be the second largest polluter of volatile organic compounds in the state. 

“It’s a critical time,” said Lau, formerly of Duquesne University and now a board member of Eyes on Shell, a grassroots accountability initiative of the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community [BCMAC]. Lau is working with the citizen scientists and local watchdogs to document the impact of Shell’s new plastics plant on the community and climate in an effort to hold the global conglomerate accountable to state and federal regulations.

Soon, Shell will need to apply to the state Department of Environmental Protection [DEP] and federal Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] for a Title V permit that would essentially allow the plant to operate for five years. In anticipation of a future public comment period, the citizen scientists and watchdogs of Eyes on Shell are gathering data that could be a lynchpin of resident input into that process.

Preparing for petrochemicals, Eyes on Shell awakens

Eyes on Shell was born about a year ago, while the cracker was still under construction, at a BCMAC-led meeting about preparing for the petrochemical industry. Since then, Eyes on Shell has grown into the central grassroots organizing and accountability organization surrounding the plant. The group meets virtually each month to update community members and share concerns and questions. 

There’s no formal membership, but Eyes on Shell gets about 50 to 70 participants at each meeting. Some journal their observations or send in photographs of what they see happening at the plant via email or an online form. A community hotline was recently launched. 

The organization details how to properly record and document an incident on its website. Take photos. Keep a journal of your observations. The group encourages residents to be as detailed as possible when reporting. Basics like date and time are essential, but so are wind direction and weather, sounds and smells and changes observed to plants or pets — anything that might indicate that something is amiss. 

“Eyes on Shell,” said Terrie Baumgardner, who’s been a member of BCMAC since 2011, “is a good vehicle for people to get involved and to push back as much as they can. To hold accountable, to make sure [Shell] realizes we want transparency, that we’re expecting these things. To know that when they say they’re going to be a good neighbor, as they’ve said since 2012, that they put some teeth into that, that it’s not just empty words.”

Establishing a baseline and incident response

Back on the waters of the Ohio, the bag in the bucket was full of air. Its contents would be sent to a lab for analysis, and the results added to a growing database cataloging incidents to which Lau and Eyes on Shell have responded.

With his instruments and buckets, Lau is the go-to guy when it comes to sampling. He coordinates what he calls the “episodic response team” (usually he and his Honda Fit) and responds to citizen reports of smoke or flaring or strange smells near the cracker. Often, he contacts the DEP to share his observations and findings, and files official complaints when warranted.

“So far, we’ve had several instances, and I don’t think we’ve ever gotten a complete story on any of them,” said Lau. Last September, a sweet maple syrup-like smell spread through communities near the plant; the DEP cited Shell, which attributed the odor to anti-corrosion treatment. In March, 2,000 gallons of sulfuric acid spilled on-site due to faulty equipment. And in August, a foam-like substance that Shell said was likely caused by a mixture of cleaning agents was identified on the river’s surface at the same outfall along the river. Lau responded to each, along with a few flaring events, to collect samples.

“It almost seems kind of convenient,” said Lau. “Shell did those things early on, and we find that we’re able to get mobilized and realized, well gee, we’re going to need some kind of like a group watching. … So in some ways Shell doing these little hiccups have helped us get ready.”

Lau said regulators like the DEP have too few people doing the work and lack the capacity to respond to incidents quickly enough to get air samples. In many cases, smells only last a couple of hours, if that, so Lau said it’s important that citizens are able to gather their own samples.

The DEP, in response to questions from PublicSource, described a multi-layered process for tracking Shell’s emissions, involving pollution control and measurement equipment installed by the company, frequent staff visits to the site and air quality monitors arrayed in communities surrounding the cracker.

From a regulatory perspective, documentation provided by citizen scientists is “very crucial,” said Mark Gorog, the DEP’s regional air quality program manager. He noted that the DEP has a team in Harrisburg that does air monitoring, drawing on data from a number of continuous monitors that the DEP has in place around the facility.

When Eyes on Shell reports a problem, he said, “We’ll make every effort to get out as quickly as we can.” But he acknowledged that “it’s hard to get out there at the drop of a hat.”

Citizen-generated information, alone, isn’t enough for an enforcement action, he added. “Generally we want to collect our own data,” he told attendees of an Eyes on Shell monthly meeting in early November. 

“I’m just trying to protect people and let them know what’s going on.”

Clifford Lau stands for a portrait on the southern shore of the Ohio River in Monaca on Oct. 27. (Photo by Quinn Glabicki/PublicSource)

The buckets Lau uses, although simple, are proven tools among citizen scientists. They’ve been used most notably by the Louisiana Bucket Brigade for similar petrochemical-related watchdog efforts in the Bayou. Once supply chain complications subside, Lau hopes to have at least five buckets available to Eyes on Shell and plans to train residents to properly collect samples.

In the future, Lau plans to purchase tubes that test for hazardous air pollutants like benzene, and a photoionization detector that can pick up volatile organic compounds. Lau receives grant funding through the Breathe Project, a Pittsburgh-based clearinghouse for air quality information. The Breathe Project is set to receive an EPA grant of nearly $500,000 to enhance monitoring of pollution in the Upper Ohio River Valley. 

Lau worked at Polaroid and then Bayer, a pharmaceutical company, as a research scientist for 23 years, part of it on a team that sought to develop a plastic car. “I thought it was kind of ironic that I came to the steel city to develop a plastic car,” he said. Later, he moved to teaching chemistry at local universities.

“I tell my students that in order to be a good citizen of the world, you need to know a little chemistry,” said Lau. “And I think I try to bring that to the environmental people that have a lot of [motivation] but maybe not the science background.”

Before the plant began ramping up operations, the emphasis was on identifying a baseline so that when the plant is fully up and running, its impact can be accurately measured. “Today is not baseline,” said Lau as he took some final notes near the dock along the Ohio. “There was something out there.”

“I don’t think we’re going to shut down Shell,” he added. “But I want to make sure with my chemistry background and science that we make sure that Shell operates as safe as possible.”

A home with a view, a deck with a smell

When they bought a home on a hill high above the Ohio in 2021, Donna Treemarchi and her husband, Dominick, weren’t immediately concerned that they would be so close to the cracker. Donna likes the view — to the east at least. She studies the ospreys and the eagles that nest in the trees along the river, and she built a garden along the hillside. “I wish you could see it when it was full bloom. It was beautiful.”

The couple moved out to Potter to be closer to their son who lives in the house across the street, grandchildren, and two young great-grandchildren. The son helped build the plant as an electrician, but now his job there is done. 

When Lau first approached the couple about installing a camera on the property, Donna was opposed. She didn’t want it to put any holes in her house. But as time went on and trains shuttled to the plant on the tracks beneath their home, waking her in the early morning, Donna’s concern began to grow. If the noise was worse than she had expected, what else could be? One morning, the smell of chemicals met her at the door to the deck where she likes to relax. She couldn’t stand to be outside.

“If something is going on there that shouldn’t be, they should be held liable,” said Donna, a paralegal.

A few weeks ago, Lau stopped by again and asked about installing a Breathe Camera on their property to gather imagery of the cracker. Breathe Cameras, the same kind that monitor U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works and other large polluters throughout the region, are designed at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and managed by the university’s CREATE Lab. They take a photograph every second, which are then digitally stitched into a live stream and made publicly available online.

One has already been installed across the river. The Treemarchis are hoping to host another. 

CREATE Lab is working with BCMAC and Eyes on Shell to validate the experiences of those who will be living right next to the cracker, said Ana Hoffman, director of air quality engagement at the lab. CREATE Lab will also organize and catalog all of the samples that Lau and Eyes on Shell collect and identify patterns and exceedances — essentially, said Hoffman, asking the question: “Is this safe?”

Low-cost, high-stakes monitoring

On the other side of the river, in a housing complex set back from the river in Vanport, Beth Biebuyck installed a different type of monitor on her home. She wants to understand the impact of the cracker. 

“I have asthma,” she said. “I have it under control right now.” She’s worried that pollution from the cracker could make her sick and affect the health of her sister Pat, with whom she lives, who has chronic fatigue syndrome. Moving, she added, is “pretty much a definite if we can’t breathe here.”

The monitors, developed by PurpleAir and maintained by local advocate and filmmaker Mark Dixon, are an affordable and scalable way to measure volatile organic compounds and particulates from homes in the area. To date, Dixon has deployed monitors at 24 sites surrounding the cracker plant.

These are not regulatory-grade monitors, said Dixon, but rather a “community-level endeavor” that helps advocates and watchdogs to ask better questions, build community, support and further validate the work of higher-grade sampling like the kind Lau conducts.

“The more a corporate entity feels watched, the better,” added Dixon. “Will Shell have free reign?” he posed. “Or will they face scrutiny at every turn?”

Watching the waterways for nurdles

Captain Evan Clark noticed the chemical smell by the outfall that morning while he was out patrolling the Ohio for something else: nurdles, the tiny plastic pellets produced by the cracker plant and other facilities.

The nurdle patrol is a joint effort of Three Rivers Waterkeeper and Mountain Watershed Association, two nonprofit advocacy organizations committed to preserving the health of the region’s rivers. Waterkeeper Executive Director Heather Hulton VanTassel said a major priority is to monitor the cracker plant and make sure Shell doesn’t violate its permits. The nurdle patrol is an effort to understand the baseline number of nurdles in the Ohio, so that when the plant reaches full operation they’ll be able to accurately measure any change.

When foam was found in the river near the outfall, Three Rivers Waterkeeper sampled water to look for contaminants, submitted an official complaint to the DEP and filed a public records request for the chemical makeups of the substances Shell said they spilled.

On Oct. 27, Clark was out with James Cato, of the Mountain Watershed Association, and Anaïs Peterson, of the national environmental nonprofit Earthworks. They trawled the waters upstream and downstream of the plant and inspected the shores for fugitive plastics.

Near the outfall, Cato pulled a nurdle from among the leaves and debris wedged along the edge of the orange plastic buffer. Small and translucent, nurdles take different shapes, sizes and colors, and have different chemical compositions depending on where they’re produced. The patrol is working to monitor the specific ratios of chemicals in the nurdles they find. The ones they found that day looked fresh, Cato said, as he grasped the tiny nurdle and secured it in a capsule for analysis. 

Moving forward, said Clark, the organizations want to empower residents to do their own nurdle patrols on the shores of the river by using kayaks and makeshift trawls made of pantyhose. They will hold a training for residents in mid-November.

Citizen monitoring, said Clark, will “provide those eyes, and then we can pass it up the chain to us and eventually DEP or EPA.”

An impending permit: Title V

“The major facilities operate under the Title V permit,” explained Mark Gorog from the DEP. “Shell is a Title V facility because the potential to emit is major for a variety of pollutants.”

Title V is an air pollution control program that stemmed from a 1990 amendment to the Clean Air Act. Title V sets emission levels for pollutants like PM 2.5 and PM 10 (particulate matter), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), hazardous air pollutants, nitrogen and sulfur oxides. It also determines the monitoring and control parameters for a plant’s emissions.

Shell does not yet have a Title V permit, which will dictate if and how it is allowed to operate for five years. The company hasn’t applied to the DEP for one yet, said Gorog. “Honestly, we’re a couple years away from that.” Right now, the cracker is considered by DEP to be in a period of “temporary operation.”

Shell needs to start the plant, demonstrate compliance with existing conditions of operation, conduct tests and analyze the results, Gorog said. “There’s a lot of work that’s ongoing at this time,” he said. “We’re meeting regularly with Shell.”

The citizen scientists of Eyes on Shell plan to be ready when public comment starts on the eventual Title V application. 

“What the public can do to help influence the Title V is by presenting evidence that the company isn’t doing their best,” said Lau. “Combat their numbers with our numbers.”

Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on twitter and instagram @quinnglabicki. 

This story was fact-checked by Ladimir Garcia.

The post The citizen scientists of crackerland: Armed with buckets and hunting plastic pellets, neighbors prepare for the petro plant next door appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Pittsburgh’s soil is contaminated in some areas by five toxic metals emitted by historic coking and smelting from the region’s now-diminished coal and steel industry, according to a new study by geologists at the University of Pittsburgh.

In a city with a history of air pollution so bad that a 19th-century writer for The Atlantic magazine called it “hell with the lid taken off,” the study shines a light on the legacy of more than a century of steel making in western Pennsylvania.

It found arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead and zinc in soils, especially in the eastern half of Pittsburgh, where the contaminants had likely been blown by prevailing winds, and trapped by the city’s temperature inversions which keep pollution close to the ground beneath an upper layer of warm air.

“Along with worsening air pollution…inversions may have given heavy metals from historic industrial sites a chance to settle from the air into the soil,” the university said in a press release this week.

Scientists from Carnegie Mellon University and the Allegheny County Conservation District collected samples from 56 sites, including parks and cemeteries that were away from other contamination sources such as roads, roofs or gutters. Their findings were correlated by University of Pittsburgh researchers to sources of industrial pollution, and published in July by the journal Environmental Research Communications.

The paper is believed to be the first anywhere to examine the legacy of decades of industrial pollution on soils, the authors said.

“This is the first study we know of that samples/measures background soils, maps them, and then uses source signatures to understand background patterns in soil chemistry,” they wrote in an email.

Although the study focused on legacy pollution, it’s likely that steel-industry plants such as U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works south of Pittsburgh are still contaminating soil, said Alexandra Maxim, a former Pitt graduate and now a Ph.D. candidate at Georgia Tech who led the study, and her co-author, Daniel Bain, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

“Our data cannot implicate any of the remnants of the steel industry, but the patterns we observe suggest areas around coking facilities were receiving contamination that looks like coking emissions. So modern contamination from industries operating like those responsible for the observed contamination seems likely,” they said in the email.

Still, the study did not identify any harms to human health or the natural environment. Maxim said there are too many variables, such as whether soil gets in the human mouth or whether the digestive system can separate the toxic metal, to draw any conclusions about whether the metals have negative health effects.

“This is more of a first step, where we evaluate how bad the contamination is, particularly in areas that aren’t necessarily measured that often,” she said.

Amanda Malkowski, a spokeswoman for Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel, which has long dominated the industry in the region and still operates three plants there, said the company “follows local, state and national rules and guidelines that are in place for our operations.”

Although most of the contaminants were found below levels that trigger action by regulators, they may warrant soil testing by residents who grow vegetables or allow their children to play in places where they may come into contact with the soil, said Maxim.

“I don’t think people need to be scared but I think they need to be aware,” she said in a statement. “Make sure you test your soil, and be thoughtful about your gardening and your children playing in certain areas.”

Other precautionary measures include using raised beds for gardening or laying down paving stones for children to play on, Maxim said.

The only metal that exceeded a standard set by Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection was arsenic, which was found at a median reading of 13.9 milligrams per kilogram, above the DEP’s soil “action level” of 12 mg/kg. The median occurrence for lead was 99 mg/kg, well inside the official limit, while copper, zinc and cadmium were also significantly lower than the state level that requires cleanup.

Lead in soil seemed to be “strongly influenced” by secondary smelting, the study said, but it acknowledged that the metal’s previous status as a gasoline additive may account for the lead found in soil.

“Care was taken to ensure near-road environments were not sampled, avoiding hotspots of lead contamination, but we cannot rule out the potential that this historically dominant source impacted broader areas,” it said.

The peer-reviewed paper, titled “Urban soils in a historically industrial city: patterns of trace metals in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” noted that a concentration of steelmaking and other industries along the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers likely contributed “a mix of various metals to Pittsburgh soils.”

It argued that its findings have implications for cities around the world, especially now that developments such as urban gardening and green infrastructure have the potential to disturb soil contamination, and increase exposure for humans and natural systems.

There were a wide variety of contamination sources in Pittsburgh so it’s challenging to attribute metals in the soil to specific sources, the paper said. But it identified five chemistry sources that are linked to metals in the soil: fly ash from coking; the bulk chemistry of coal; bedrock; fly ash from coal-fired power generation, and secondary lead smelting.

Together with the effects of frequent temperature inversions in the river valleys where industry was concentrated, and the prevailing winds, the industrial outputs are likely to have affected the land as well as the air, the paper said.

“This concentration of atmospheric pollutants for extended periods of time has the potential to focus and encourage deposition of this contamination on the land surface,“ it said.

The study, which collected samples in 2016 and analyzed them through 2019, was funded by the Heinz Endowments, the Henry Leighton Research Fund at the University of Pittsburgh and the National Science Foundation.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.

The post Toxic metals entered soil from Pittsburgh steel-industry emissions, study says appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

More than 100 concerned residents of Beaver County attended a community meeting hosted by Royal Dutch Shell in the town of Beaver Tuesday night, hoping to get their questions answered about the potential environmental impact of the $6 billion cracker plant being built in their community. But some left with the feeling that their queries were unanswered.

The meeting, the third planned by Shell, was held in the College Square Elementary School and opened with an hourlong presentation by company employees. Beaver residents Debbie and Rick Pentz attended the meeting with their granddaughter Alayna, hoping for answers, but found the meeting to be less informative than anticipated.

Debbie Pentz had come prepared with a list of questions, including some inspired by PublicSource’s recent reporting on fenceline monitoring of pollutants entering the community. But Rick complained that the replies seemed scripted and superficial, and Debbie said she couldn’t hear what other attendees were asking or the answers. This was due, in part, to how Shell set up the meeting; instead of an open question-and-answer session, they funnelled the crowd to tables organized by topic to talk with Shell representatives.

“The reason we structured it like this was to give people a one-on-one opportunity to have their question answered,” said Joe Minnitte, an external relations advisor for Shell.

In the broader presentation, company representatives dropped references to the Steelers and local hospitality while discussing Shell’s community outreach and safety and environmental preparations for the petrochemical plant. Once operational, the plant will convert natural gas into plastics.

The plant is expected to produce hundreds of tons of potential hazardous pollutants into the atmosphere.

Despite the congenial presentation, most people in attendance remained worried about possible air pollution from the plant and much more.

What happens if there’s a major accident or explosion? Will citizens be compensated for property damage or medical problems? How many outsiders are moving in?

Juliann Petersen, a local healthcare worker who attended the meeting, was frustrated after Shell’s presentation.

While the presentation was forthcoming on Shell’s efforts to plant trees and lay down mulch in a local playground, Petersen felt she didn’t get satisfactory responses when she asked about Shell’s air permit. The permit covers a swath of Western Pennsylvania, but she’s concerned about the hyperlocal effect on the borough of Beaver, particularly the health risks for the locals.

“It was a public relations meeting,” Petersen said. “My questions did not get answers.”

While the meeting was open to the public, no recording or photograpy were allowed.

A few attendees came to the event as members of the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Committee, including Terrie Baumgardner, an instructor at Penn State’s Beaver County campus. She joined the group in 2011, when it mostly opposed fracking. Now, the group has been focusing on the cracker plant.

“The cracker is going to justify fracking to Wall Street,” Baumgardner said. She fears the plant’s 1.6 million tons of plastic production, produced from unconventional gas wells in and around Western Pennsylvania, will encourage further investment in the petrochemical industry in the region — and further environmental degradation.

Jim Sewell, the cracker plant’s environmental director, spoke to the crowd during the presentation. Sewell said the plant is required by its DEP permit to utilize the best technology to achieve the strictest emissions standards.

While there are safeguards in place, like Shell’s leak detection and repair program, some environmentalists are arguing it’s not enough. Some environmentalists are pushing for real-time fenceline monitoring that is used at other industrial facilities across the country and provides information about the air quality passing from the plant’s property into the community.

Shell told PublicSource for a July story that it is open to considering the installation of fenceline monitoring at the plant, but the company hasn’t committed to it.

While some attendees were categorically opposed to the cracker, Robert Boles made clear he had no philosophical issues with the plant. Boles, an engineer, volunteer firefighter, and father of four, just had one request — that Shell take a baseline measurement of everything from air quality to light pollution to ambient noise. That way, if citizens complain to the company about anything from a funny smell to loud noises keeping them up at night, there would be some data for a fair comparison.

He brought up that concern to a Shell representative, but held back from asking if the company had a plan in case of a disastrous accident at the plant. With the size of the crowd vying for personal attention, he didn’t feel that asking would be worthwhile.

“It felt like [the meeting] was structured to avoid tough questions,” Boles said.

Stephen Caruso is a journalist based in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at stephen@publicsource.org. Follow him on twitter @StephenJ_Caruso.

The post Beaver County residents get little assurance on concerns about Shell cracker plant appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Most of the time, the sprawling 150-acre Rebitch farmland located just outside of Delmont, 40 minutes east of Pittsburgh, is peaceful and serene. But at times of heavy rainfall, the Rebitch family waits apprehensively to see what the pressure brewing beneath the ground will unleash onto their property.

Six manholes dotting the family’s land periodically overflow with stormwater and raw, untreated material. The manholes, part of Delmont Borough’s sanitary sewage system, release sewage that seeps into the soil. Often, it will directly enter the adjacent Beaver Run Creek, where people go fishing for trout and other coldwater fish species.

And that creek feeds the Beaver Run Reservoir, a public drinking water supply.

The problem, which affects the public drinking water supply, has been going on for approximately twenty years. News crews came and left. But sewage, when it rains, continues to flow. And it’s causing some real tension in the community.

“You’ve got people flushing their condoms down the toilet, you’ve got condoms coming onto the property, and all kinds of human waste,” Ed Rebitch said. Rebitch, 58, remembers farming sweet corn and making hay on the farmland, which his grandparents purchased in the 1920s.

Now, the land is part of the Rock Springs Trust, a holding trust the family established to keep the land undeveloped and in its prime state. The repeated sewage overflow and flooding have rendered large portions of the Rebitches’ property useless for farming.

“The grasses have changed, from lush pastureland to that of wetlands – grasses which you would see in an area that’s more swamplike,” Rebitch said.

Sometimes, the pressure of the sewage water is so extreme it pushes off the heavy manhole lid.

According to Cynthia Walter, who has a Ph.D. in biology and has studied water pollution for over 25 years, the situation is cause for concern.

“Any municipality that allows raw sewage to escape sewer pipes and arrive on the surface and then also, enter the drinking water supply… is harming their own citizens because of all that surface sewage,” Walter, who now teaches biology at St. Vincent College, said.

Over the years, Ed Rebitch and his family have become increasingly invested in raising awareness about the sewage overflows and demanding authorities to resolve the situation. They’ve consistently attended Delmont Borough Council meetings to voice their concerns, and have created a website and Facebook page about the problem. But for the most part, members of the Rebitch family feel as though their complaints have fallen on deaf ears.

Delmont Council Solicitor Daniel Hewitt said that in the 17 years he’s served on the council, the borough has actively worked on its sanitary sewage system.

“We are working to continue forward with things that we believe will help fix this problem,” Hewitt said in an interview with PublicSource.

To the surface

Earlier this month, the Rebitch family put up a billboard on Route 66 decrying the sewage situation. To fund the billboard, they collected approximately $1,000 from about ten different community members, all of whom were concerned about the issue. Because it was a community service issue, he said the billboard cost less to rent than it would for commercial purposes.

Despite their concern, none of the contributors, except for the Rebitch family, wanted to speak to PublicSource on record about the problem.

The decision to put up such a provocative billboard was hard, Rebitch said, since he considers several council members his friends.

“It’s hard to do this, to take it to this extreme. But they leave us no choice. They made us take this action,” he said.

Ed Rebitch’s daughter Sarah Rebitch, 26, said the Facebook page has experienced more activity since the billboard went up.

Beaver Run Creek’s final destination is the Beaver Run Reservoir, one of Westmoreland County’s primary drinking water supplies. Water from the reservoir is treated at the George Sweeney Treatment Plant, which isn’t properly equipped to process and treat sewage. Beaver Run Reservoir supplies about 140,000 people with drinking water, according to a 2002 assessment by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

The Rebitch family members get their water from a private well, and thus are not, in fact, consumers of water from the Beaver Run Reservoir. They say they are mainly concerned for the many community members who do obtain their drinking water from there.

The problem has been going on since Sarah, their youngest child, was small, Rebitch said.

‘The sewage issue’ lurks in Delmont

Although the Rebitches say not enough has been done to rectify Delmont’s sewage system, there’s no question that ‘the sewage issue’ is on the minds of many Delmont community members.

Tensions were high surrounding the topic during the public comment portion of Delmont Borough Council’s most recent monthly meeting held on May 9.

When the PublicSource reporter during the citizens’ comment period asked council members how concerned they were about the length of time that raw sewage has been entering the Beaver Run Reservoir, solicitor Daniel Hewitt strongly recommended that no one on the council should respond to the question.
“This is a time of public comment. This is not particularly a time of public questions. I mean, by definition under state law. OK?” Hewitt said.

He clarified that although citizens are always invited to ask questions during the public comment portion of the meeting, council members are not required under state law to respond.

“I don’t think anyone has belittled the importance of addressing sewage problems throughout Delmont,” Hewitt told PublicSource during the meeting, adding that everyone on the council has worked on Delmont sewage issues “from time to time.”

Julie Rebitch, Ed’s wife, was in attendance and posed a question, which was met with a similarly defensive response from Hewitt before Dave Weber, who serves on the Sewage committee, responded to her.

Rebitch asked about the Borough’s recent decision in April to tie down one of the manhole covers, thereby securing it from being lifted up by the force of the sewage. She said “logic and physics tell us” that if the sewage does not emerge from that manhole, it will come out somewhere else.

“I’m an engineer, so I’m not totally stupid,” Weber said in response to her claim.

He said the DEP recommended the manhole be locked down, and that the Borough hopes that if inflow to the sewage system is reduced, the sewage will not discharge elsewhere along the line. He agreed with Julie Rebitch’s sentiment that preventing raw sewage from entering the community’s municipal water source should be a priority.

At the start of the meeting, Bob Burton, 81, slowly rose to his feet and approached the front of the room to distribute copies of a recent Tribune-Review article to each council member. The article was about the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority’s recent decision to grant $2 million to Unity Township to improve and expand its storm sewers.

Burton lives in the housing development located directly above the valley where the Rebitch family lives. He said that when he and his wife purchased their house five years ago, they didn’t realize the land was originally slated to be a stormwater retention facility.

“I have a piece of property next to my house that could be a retention facility. It would normally retain the water that goes down the steep hill,” Burton said, addressing the council.

The retention facility would likely help to diminish the high levels of stormwater runoff entering the valley.

Rebitch, who said she hadn’t ever spoken to Burton before that evening, thanked him for speaking up about the topic.

Tracking our water through the treatment process

The Rebitches’ property is technically situated in Salem Township, about 300 acres down the road from Delmont proper. “Down” is the correct term to use: the property is located in a deep valley, beneath the small town of Delmont, at the lowest point of the sewage system. So eventually, all of Delmont’s stormwater runoff – from driveways, sidewalks, roofs and parking lots – makes its way down into that valley.

Besides often entering the stream directly, the excessive stormwater has, over time, weakened the stream bed, to the point that the sewage lines located beneath the surface have been exposed. These sewage lines transport sewage from the Cramer Pump Station, which is located just off the Rebitch property, to the sanitary sewage treatment plant operated by Franklin Township Municipal Sanitary Authority.

But several vulnerabilities in the force main line have resulted in untreated sewage being released directly into the water table.

The iron pipe that transports the sewage is vulnerable for two main reasons. First of all, it is old, having been initially designed in the mid-1980s to transport a lower volume of sewage. Secondly, the clay soil surrounding the pipe is acidic, and corrodes the pipe itself.

Water from the Beaver Run Reservoir is transported to the George R. Sweeney Treatment Plant, which is designed to treat water that’s already relatively clean.

Walter said harmful chemicals that are found in raw sewage get through drinking water treatment processes.

“The [Sweeney] treatment plant is designed to take nearly clean water, and make it absolutely clean – and free us of that bacteria – so when you can get it out of your tap, it’s really excellent water,” Walter said.

Conversely, sanitary sewage treatment plants – like the one in Franklin Township – are designed to treat the water that leaves our houses via toilets and sinks. These separate, totally distinct facilities are equipped to capture a huge amount of bacteria, including viruses that could be pathogenic – and, to some extent, antibiotics and hormones. From there, the treated water is discharged into streams and lakes.

Walter cited a study, published in a 2009 issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology, that screened 19 drinking water treatment plants for a range of pharmaceuticals and organic contaminants. Out of the 19, only two facilities were found to be clear. These two facilities were fed by protected reservoirs with no sewage or recreation.

According to Delmont councilman David Weber, a retired electrical engineer who serves on the sewage committee, the issue is important to the council, and they’re working to resolve it. Weber has only been on the council for less than a year, but he’s running for re-election this year in hopes that he can continue working on the sewage issue.

“To the best of our ability, we’re chasing this down methodically,” Weber said.

He cited dye testing and smoke testing as methods the borough has used to see where leaks are occurring in the sewage system. Some of the repair work that’s been done in the past has been documented, and some has not.

“What I’m trying to bring to the table with my experience is the methodological approach, and the documentation piece of it. Because these guys, our maintenance guys, have been doing a lot of things, but if you don’t document it, it’s like anything else, it didn’t happen,” Weber said.

Above all, Weber said the goal is to reduce the level of inflow and infiltration (I&I) entering the sewage system. The two terms are closely related, and it’s often difficult to distinguish them, but respectively, inflow refers to stormwater entering a system through direct connections: roof drains, downspouts, driveway drains and sump pumps. Infiltration refers to groundwater entering the system through leaks or cracks in sewage pipes.

Ultimately, the most effective way to stop the sewage overflows would be to replace the entire force main line beneath the Rebitch family’s property. That pipe is between 1,100-1,300 feet long, and would be quite an undertaking, according to Weber.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection could issue a consent order that would require the borough to make significant updates to the system under federal or state law. Hewitt said the DEP has not, as of yet, been reprimanding Delmont for the system’s faults, or pressuring the borough in any way to fix them.

If the DEP does not put any official pressure on a municipality to fix a problem like this, a small community without a lot of financial resources, like Delmont, can take action in other ways. An entity like the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority (PENNVEST), or the Commonwealth Financing Authority, could provide grant funding for an environmental project to update the sewage system.

Why no fix yet?

To date, the DEP has not issued a consent order to Delmont that would require it to upgrade the sewage system under federal or state law.

Lauren Fraley, community relations coordinator for the DEP’s Southwest Regional Office, said the agency is “aware that a manhole that is part of Delmont’s sanitary sewer system has experienced overflows.” She said the department has discussed the issue with Delmont, and that Delmont is currently seeking to replace the force main.

But it’s actually six manholes, not just one, that have experienced overflows. And Delmont Council told Ed Rebitch they are not able to invest in more than a short-term plan, of five or ten years, he said.

“We think that the DEP has been specifically turning a blind eye to it, because Delmont Borough is a small community and we don’t have deep pockets,” Julie Rebitch said.

Solicitor Hewitt agreed that lack of funding is a barrier, telling PublicSource in an interview that if the borough council had sufficient money to spend to fix the problem, it would.

And Burton, the man who unknowingly purchased his home on land originally intended for stormwater retention, also said the problem is fundamentally a question of money.

But Rebitch, who’s worked as a Certified Public Accountant since 1985, said he’s aware of several funding opportunities that could help Delmont to upgrade its sewage system. PENNVEST, the entity that granted Unity Township $2 million to fix a similar issue, accepts funding applications year-round for sewage, stormwater and drinking water projects.

To receive funding, applicants must be “shovel-ready,” Rebitch says, or ready to launch head-first into the proposed project.

“They have to have a plan in place,” Rebitch said. “The engineering has to be done. That’s why they need to get moving on it.”

Weber said that the council is working with the DEP to devise a solution, and that the group takes the problem seriously. He also added: “I don’t want to minimize this… but sewage overflows are kind of a fact of life. Nobody likes them,” Weber said. “Until we can find a way to mitigate it, that’s gonna happen.”

According to Walter, Pennsylvanians tend to take their running water supply, which consists of 86,000 miles of streams and rivers, for granted. The state is unique in that it has more running water than many other places – more than any other state in the U.S., apart from Alaska.

“Because we live close to it here in Pennsylvania, we think it’s common, we think it’s abundant, and we think it’ll always run clear,” Walter said. “And that is a myth that we are unfortunately waking up to.”

Delmont Borough Council meetings are held on the second Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m.

PublicSource Interactives & Design Editor Natasha Khan built the graphic for this story.

Molly Duerig is a freelance journalist who also manages the Filmmakers Youth Media program at Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. She can be reached at mollyduerig@gmail.com.

The post Heavy rain means raw sewage in this Westmoreland County community — on private land and in public drinking water appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.