'A sacrifice zone': East Palestine's wastewater is flooding into this Ohio community

Injection wells 100 miles south of East Palestine near Coshocton will be used to dispose of treated water from the train derailment cleanup.

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But Mills and many other locals are afraid all this is now under attack: in recent weeks, thousands of gallons of wastewater from February’s toxic chemical derailment site in East Palestine 100 miles to the north are being delivered to an injection well outside the town.

Owned by Buckeye Brine, a private company, the injection wells will see the wastewater pumped thousands of feet underground for storage. It has become a major concern for Coshocton residents and fueled protests.

“If you pump millions of gallons of something into the ground, at some point it’s going to affect everyone,” Mills told the Guardian recently.

“It doesn’t take a Nasa scientist [to know] that all it takes is one geological occurrence or ground shifting [and] we’re going to be stuck with this issue.”

On 3 February, 51 cars derailed from a Norfolk Southern train outside East Palestine, dumping about 100,000 gallons of hazardous chemicals and triggering a huge fire that burned for days. Hydrogen chloride and phosgene, a poisonous compound, were released into the air.

Cleanup has lasted months and produced tens of millions of gallons of wastewater laced with vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen. Ohio’s emergency management agency reported in August that crews had collected and disposed of 88,500 tons of hazardous and solid waste and 28m gallons of “surface and groundwater categorized as hazardous waste”.

Buckeye Brine told the Guardian that the wastewater being injected underneath Coshocton is rainwater and runoff from vehicles cleaned after operating in the affected site. The federal and Ohio environmental protection agencies say the wastewater has been treated to drinking water safety levels.

***** If it’s safe to drink, why do they have to bury it? Something doesn’t add up.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/11/a-sacrifice-zone-east-palestines-wastewater-is-flooding-into-this-ohio-community