In the village of East Palestine, four new businesses and 18 building permits were issued. New businesses include a Dollar Tree, coffee shop and new places for pet grooming.

It's a good sign the village is making a comeback, according to Mayor Trent Conaway.

"That is our plan, that's our goal to get some new faces in town and you know, hopefully have economic development and be back to the close knit town we once were," Conaway said.

Conaway hopes these new businesses will attract more people to the area and spur economic development as well as overall enthusiasm, after a rough couple years.

The Norfolk Southern Environmental Response suggests the cleanup process is still ongoing.

"The past week or so we did some work in sulfur run, here," Chris Hunsicker said. "We treated the bank of the stream, we sprayed it with concrete to basically seal some areas where there were some legacy impacts that were seeping into the creek where we saw some other sources. We were looking to make sure we didn't have log jammed, there's nothing that might've been collecting in the creek holding up debris, sheen, something like that. We're looking at pretty good shape with that and we're looking at the culverts again to make sure they weren't blocked with flow. So those are the mitigation activities, those are all pretty much wrapped up," he said.

Hunsicker adds, the work is nearing completion.

"Following that mitigation work, we've moved into our final reassessment phase and they started that this morning today and they're gonna work from sulfur run up into town into sulfur run and then up towards the derailment site," Hunsicker said.

Hunsicker said they'll also be doing a sheen assessment process which will take a couple of weeks and after that, there will be another round of sediment sampling.

However, residents are still looking for answers surrounding the long-term health effects of the train derailment and subsequent burn-off.

"When is this going to be addressed by the federal government, by the local government, by the state government, I don't care who addresses it but it's time someone addresses it," Jami Wallace, East Palestine resident said. "No one's helping us and it's being ignored, you wouldn't even reply to my letter, Trent," she said.

Conaway responded directly to Wallace in a conversation where emotions ran high.

"I don't think Norfolk can give you answers because they just haul the stuff, I don't think the EPA does because they just cleanup the stuff. We need real scientists we need medical doctors to tell us why certain people are having issues," Conaway said.

Wallace replied in tears, "People are afraid to speak out because they feel like they're gonna be black balled by our leadership in town. This isn't right, this isn't the East Palestine I knew and loved. I could talk to my neighbors about anything and now I can't even walk down the streets of my own community. You don't take the phone calls I take every single day from residents reaching out that are afraid to speak publicly or that have spoken publicly about these long-term illnesses," she said.

Conaway chimed back in saying, "We wanna get you answers and I...I don't know like, there's only so much we can do."

Hunsicker said, "Things are looking pretty good right now. We feel pretty confident with what we've done and what we're seeing... so we think we're in pretty good shape with the stream assessment work."