Ashland says the water's fine

Feb. 14—ASHLAND — Utility officials in Ashland said Tuesday the water is perfectly safe to drink in light of the Feb. 3 train derailment in Ohio that unleashed some contaminants in the Ohio River.

According to Mark Hall, director of utilities, and Bill Stambaugh, superintendent of the water treatment plant, the city has been on top of any developments with the spill since the day of the wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, near the Pennsylvania border.

A few days after the derailment, the train was intentionally burned to prevent it from exploding, releasing vinyl chloride into the air, causing an evacuation of the town's residents. Since then, residents have been remiss to return.

The Ohio River Sanitation Commission, of which Ashland is a part, keeps tabs along the entire river, so if there's any issue the water plant can adjust as necessary, Stambaugh said.

While Beaver Creek where the spill went in saw the death of thousands of fish, by the time the chemicals could reach Boyd County, Stambaugh said the water will have been treated by many water plants and the river will have diluted it.

"This is hundreds of miles away," Stambaugh said. "There's a lot of time for it dilute out before it makes its way down here."

For Stambuagh, this isn't his "first chemical valley rodeo." Back in 2014, he practically lived at the plant during the spill in the Elk River near Charleston that left hundreds of thousands without potable water.

"If it comes to Huntington, we know it's a problem and we'll have time to shut it down," he said. "Back in that spill, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the locks, so that helped dilute."

The chemicals released into the Ohio River basin from the train wreck could cause some changes in the taste and odor of the water, but the standard use of powdered activated carbon should mitigate that, Stambaugh said.

"It's something we use to treat a lot of the stuff in this river," he said. "We put in for the high quality, so it should take care of it. The reports we're hearing is that even in small amounts, the taste and odor can be off."

If push comes to shove, the city can survive for three days without drawing from the river.

According to the EPA, air monitoring in the East Palestine has shown no levels of health concern for the vinyl chloride or hydrogen chloride since Feb. 8, the day residents were cleared to return.

As of Feb. 14, the EPA said 396 homes in the East Palestine area were voluntarily screened and no chemicals were detected.

On social media, the incident has become a rallying cry for activists on both the Right and the Left in the country.

Of local concern is one tweet from Stew Peters, a right-wing podcast host who has made a name for himself with COVID-19 conspiracy theories, showing a map of everywhere within 200 miles of the derailment and claiming livestock are dying and water is being poisoned.

While the map in the image looked official, it can in fact be made by anyone simply by logging onto https://www.statsamerica.org/radius/big.aspx, typing in East Palestine and setting the radius at 200 miles.

If anyone needs reassurance, they can go outside and look up and notice that the birds are not falling out of the sky.

(606) 326-2653 — henry@dailyindependent.com