Water Sampling In East Palestine, Ohio, Has Been A Debacle

Officials have repeatedly stressed that the water is safe to drink after the disastrous train derailment — but sampling errors have kept scientists on alert.
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When HuffPost confronted railroad giant Norfolk Southern about the flawed water sampling its contractor conducted in East Palestine, Ohio, in the wake of the disastrous train derailment, the company shrugged it off as an issue of “erroneous” recording on the part of the lab that analyzed the samples.

Similarly, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency — the state agency that relied solely on the results of those railroad-funded samples to initially declare the municipal water in the village safe to drink — said subsequent “laboratory validation reports will be prepared and will address this issue, but the results are valid.”

But the final water quality analyses are in, and they detail many of the same issues found in the preliminary reports, namely samples that were not acidified to federal EPA specifications and containers with large air bubbles in them.

Sam Bickley, an aquatic ecologist who first alerted HuffPost to the sampling issues, said the final reports do not alleviate any of his initial concerns.

“I’m not sold,” said Bickley, who works at Virginia Scientist-Community Interface, an advocacy-focused coalition of scientists and engineers. “And if I was living in town, I certainly would not be sold.”

The final reports, which Ohio EPA posted to its website over the weekend, are the latest in a messy, railroad-led sampling effort that has only helped to fuel distrust in a community desperately searching for answers about how the disaster is impacting public and environmental health.

The nearly 2-mile Norfolk Southern train derailed and caught fire on Feb. 3 while carrying toxic and flammable materials, including hundreds of thousands of pounds of vinyl chloride, a common organic chemical used in the production of plastics. Fearing a catastrophic explosion, authorities conducted what they described as a “controlled burn” of the vinyl chloride three days after the crash — a controversial decision that has left area residents terrified.

To be clear, the water in East Palestine may very well be safe for consumption — at least for now — as federal, state and local officials have repeatedly stressed in recent days. In an effort to reassure the community, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) and others drank the town’s tap water during a series of home visits on Tuesday.

As HuffPost first reported late last week, Ohio officials only had preliminary data from a railroad contractor’s sampling when they gave the residents of East Palestine the green light to drink the village water. Making matters worse, the initial lab report flagged that many of those samples were not preserved or handled in accordance with federal EPA standards — errors that independent experts slammed as “sloppy” and “amateur.”

In the wake of the train accident, AECOM, the Dallas-based consulting firm contracted by Norfolk Southern, sampled untreated water from five municipal wells that supply the town’s municipal drinking water, each more than a mile from the derailment site, as well as treated municipal water. The samples were analyzed by Eurofins TestAmerica Laboratories, an environmental testing lab in Canton, Ohio.

The Columbiana County Health District separately tested the village’s public water system, but Ohio EPA acknowledged to HuffPost that it did not receive those preliminary results until several hours after the governor’s office declared the water safe. Instead, the state took the railroad-funded preliminary results and ran with them. State officials have repeatedly said the county results confirm AECOM’s findings that the water is free of contaminants associated with the derailment, but as of Thursday morning those results had still not been made public.

Twenty days after the derailment, the only publicly available data on the quality of East Palestine’s municipal water was collected by the railroad’s contractor.

Norfolk Southern has downplayed the issues with AECOM’s sampling and pointed the finger at the lab. “Reanalysis of the samples ensured method compliance and again produced a result indicating safe water,” Norfolk Southern spokesman Connor Spielmaker told HuffPost last week. “The lab did not update the comments to note the retesting and erroneously included the comments from the initial test.”

But the final lab reports only further confirm that the railroad contractor did not comply with EPA protocols for testing drinking water for volatile organic compounds. Of the 10 total water samples it analyzed, the lab flagged issues with five. Four had pH (acidity) levels that exceeded the 2 pH limit allowed under the EPA method listed in the analyses. Two samples also “contained a large air bubble in its vial, while the EPA method requires that sample bottles should not have any trapped air bubbles when sealed,” the lab report notes.

Failing to properly acidify samples or eliminate air bubbles can bias the results, lowering or even masking levels of contaminants. Eurofins’ website includes specific guides for collecting both treated and untreated drinking water in accordance with EPA methods.

Jason Marshall, an AECOM spokesman, said the company stands by the quality of its work and indicated it is following an entirely different set of sampling protocols.

“AECOM field staff are trained to collect samples in accordance with the Potable Water Sampling Plan that was developed by the Ohio EPA, Ohio Division of Health and the Columbiana County Health District in accordance with prevailing industry standards,” he said via email.

Marshall did not respond when asked where the plan could be found. And when HuffPost asked the Ohio EPA — one of the agencies that purportedly developed the plan — for a copy, its spokesman responded, “I have forwarded your request to our records staff for processing.” HuffPost was unable to locate the plan on the Ohio EPA’s website. Marshall’s description would suggest the plan was developed in the wake of the derailment.

Nicole Karn, a chemist and associate professor at the Ohio State University, called the final lab reports on AECOM’s sampling “unclear” and “uncomfortable.”

“It just doesn’t seem like things were done with care,” she said, emphasizing the need for both immediate re-sampling and long-term monitoring.

Karn has been reflecting on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, which whistleblowers and citizen scientists exposed while government leaders insisted the water was safe.

“As a scientist, I am trained to be skeptical and critical of work that’s being done — especially when the work is being funded by the people who are responsible for the problem,” Karn said. “That makes me extra concerned.”

Karn had never heard of the “Potable Water Sampling Plan” that AECOM referenced and said it is unsettling that the public is in the dark about what sampling guidelines are being followed.

“We need more transparency,” she said.

A man takes photos as a black plume rises over East Palestine, Ohio, as a result of a controlled detonation of a portion of the derailed Norfolk Southern train on Feb. 6.
A man takes photos as a black plume rises over East Palestine, Ohio, as a result of a controlled detonation of a portion of the derailed Norfolk Southern train on Feb. 6.
Gene J. Puskar/ Associated Press

James Lee, an Ohio EPA spokesman, defended AECOM’s sampling and dismissed the red flags in the reports.

“It’s important to understand that none of the issues cited by the validation contractor are in and of themselves significant enough to invalidate the conclusions: That is, there no [sic] indication of contaminants from the derailment in East Palestine’s wells,” he said in an email Wednesday. “In fact, the final report shows the [volatile organic compound] analysis was valid. Additional testing has confirmed this conclusion.”

Certain language appears to have been softened between Eurofins’ preliminary and final reports.

For example, in the preliminary analyses, Eurofins repeatedly noted that the sampling issues had an “unknown” impact on the final data.

That language does not appear in the final reports. Instead, on one of the samples that had an air bubble in it, the lab listed 11 separate contaminants under “parameters affected.” On that list is butyl acrylate — one of the chemicals that spilled and burned in the fiery derailment. The organic compound is used to make adhesives and paint, and exposure can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea and vomiting.

Norfolk Southern and Eurofins did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment about the final reports. Eurofins previously declined to comment, citing contractual obligations and confidentiality for its client.

On Tuesday, DeWine twice skirted questions about Norfolk Southern’s involvement in testing the water in East Palestine and what sampling results the state relied on to initially declare the municipal system safe.

“Yes. We’re testing independently,” DeWine said at a press conference.

That was true — as of about two hours prior.

The Ohio EPA confirmed Tuesday that it had begun its own testing of the East Palestine municipal water system earlier that day and expects results back from an independent lab within a week. In a newly updated information page on its website, the state agency notes that it is supervising the railroad contractor’s sampling.

“We will continue to test,” Lee, the agency’s spokesman, said Wednesday. “All indications thus far show that the drinking water meets all federal health and safety standards. East Palestine’s public drinking water is safe. Long-term monitoring will allow Ohio EPA to identify any potential impacts to the water supply.”

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