Baltimore mayor says 'no' to East Palestine waste water
EAST PALESTINE, Ohio - Another community says it doesn’t want waste from the toxic train derailment in East Palestine.
Baltimore, Maryland Mayor Brandon M. Scott announced on Monday that he is taking action to deny an industrial remediation contractor’s request to dispose of pretreated wastewater from the Norfolk Southern Railroad derailment into the Baltimore City wastewater collection system.
The city was notified last week that Clean Harbor proposed to treat rail cars filled with 675,000 gallons of wastewater collected from rainwater, collected water, and stream water above and below the East Palestine cleanup site, then dispose of that treated water into Baltimore’s wastewater system.
Mayor Scott said in a statement that Baltimore’s law department has determined that the Department of Public Works has the authority to modify discharge permits in an effort to ‘safeguard Publicly Owned Treatment Works from interference, pass-through, or contamination of treatment by-products.’
The mayor says he has directed the Department of Public Works to modify Clean Harbor's discharge permit to deny their request to discharge processed into the City's wastewater system.
Clean Harbors has facilities across the country that Mayor Scott says may be better positioned to dispose of the treated wastewater.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a letter informing states that they could not block contaminated waste from the derailment from being shipped to hazardous waste storage sites around the country.
Some elected officials and states, including Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, sought to block shipments from East Palestine.
The EPA said states had no reason to block shipments of the type of waste that certified facilities process.
