Natural water flow will soon be returned to Sulphur Run following last year’s Norfolk Southern train derailment, marking a major milestone in the remediation efforts. With the water flow restored, the holding tanks along with the Norfolk Southern wastewater treatment facility (pictured) located on North Pleasant Drive will be decommissioned and dismantled. (Photo by Stephanie Elverd)

EAST PALESTINE — Norfolk Southern (NS) reported through its website nsmakingitright.com, that all natural water flow that runs through the derailment site will soon return to Sulphur Run, nearly a year and half after the rail disaster.

Both the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) gave the green light to restore the final ditch segment along the tracks.

“After completion of the EPA/OEPA regulatory approval process, the final ditch segment along the tracks was approved for water to flow naturally to Sulphur Run,” NS said. “This is a significant restoration milestone and part of the overall efforts to restore the affected areas to pre-derailment conditions. Stormwater will continue to be collected and disposed off-site from the remaining water management areas where decommissioning is currently underway pending regulatory clearance.”

Since the derailment, water has been redirected around the site with a clean-water-bypass system — a series of pipes and pumps–and later discharged downstream.

Storm and ice melt captured at the site was stored in one of two million-gallon tanks that was built on North Pleasant Drive. The water currently being held in the tank will be disposed of and the tanks decommissioned and dismantled.

“Due to the significant reduction of the amount of stormwater requiring collection for off-site management and the ongoing site decommissioning activities, preparations for the disassembly of the large storage tanks along N. Pleasant Drive aka ‘the Big Blue Tanks’ will begin,” NS said. ” In the next few weeks, these tanks will be disassembled one at a time as appropriate to maintain necessary capacity to continue to manage site water. As with the other storage tank areas, as the tank containment materials are removed, confirmation sampling will occur in the areas beneath the former tanks followed by regrading and restoration.”

The frac tank farms and smaller storage tanks at the end of East Martin Street are also in the process of being decommissioned. Equipment continues to be cleaned and staged for off-site transportation The liners under the equipment and soil and gravel immediately under any liners are transported off-site. Following soil removal, confirmation sampling will occur, and these areas will be graded and restored.

Final confirmation soil sampling — what the EPA has described as a double check – is over 70% complete.

“If exceedances of final clean-up standards are identified, those areas will undergo additional delineation to ensure all derailment related chemicals are fully identified and determination of further courses of action,” NS said. ” The ongoing decommissioning activities will open additional areas for sampling.”

Residents can expect to see restoration work continue, as crews grade and backfill excavated areas, reconstruct ditches, and install stormwater infrastructure “as part of efforts to return the site to pre-derailment conditions.” Ditch and stormwater infrastructure restoration activities will also be continued on the south side of the tracks, east and west of N. Pleasant Drive. Concrete culvert installation will begin in the ditch to the north of the tracks and west of N. Pleasant Drive with continued less intensive grading activities to the north of the tracks.

In creek clean-up news, NS reported that “crews have completed the post-mitigation sampling in each creek with the “data will be received and analyzed over the next few weeks to evaluate stream conditions following cleanup activities.”