More than a year ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Norfolk Southern celebrated the “last load of contaminated soil” being removed from a site near the derailment of an N&S train in February of that year. Now, Chris Hunsicker, overseeing remediation efforts in East Palestine, has had to go before the Village Council to report exceedances of vinyl chloride, benzene, trimethylbenzene and 2-butoxyethanol have been detected through confirmatory sampling.

“We are not saying it’s perfect. Nobody is saying that, but we are getting toward the end of the process,” Hunsicker said. “There is going to be more trucks, more soil and more excavation over the next few months. … but it’s not going to the level we had last year when we were digging stuff out. We still have work to do, and soil is still going to be coming out of the ground.”

In other words, whatever was being celebrated in October 2023 was more like a beginning than an end.

“The investigation work is still underway, but we are hoping to have it completed here in the next two weeks, and hopefully we will have a really good picture of what’s left,” Eric Pohl, on-scene coordinator for the EPA told council.

There are still “pockets of contamination.” There is still a sheen on the creek — which cannot be properly assessed even until water levels rise. In fact, there is enough still to do that Hunsicker says he hopes remediation work will be done by the end of the first quarter of next year.

“We think we got a pretty good handle on where things are,” he said. “We feel pretty confident about that, but if we get somewhere and realize ‘hey there’s a finger of something that is going somewhere we didn’t anticipate,’ that could be a challenge …. It may go longer if we run into challenges with construction, operations and weather.”

Give him credit for being honest, at least, that neither Norfolk Southern nor the EPA actually knows how much more there is to find or how long it might take to set things right. Maybe all these findings are an indication the work is being carried out as thoroughly as residents have a right to expect.

They are certainly proof there were no easy answers, back in 2023 — no cause for celebration that the job was, for all intents and purposes, finished. Hunsicker, Pohl and all those continuing the investigation and remediation must remain vigilant and thorough, no matter how much Norfolk Southern and federal officials may wish to wash their hands of the matter.