(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Residents of Putnam, County Indiana, just west of Indianapolis, have voiced their concerns about the toxic waste from the train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, which has been sent to a landfill in their community.
Residents recently attended a town hall meeting about the waste, but they didn’t hear what they wanted.
Three shipments from the wreck have already gone to the Heritage Environmental Services landfill, and four more truckloads were scheduled to arrive on March 2.
On March 3, Republican Congressman Jim Baird published an open letter to Indiana Department of Environmental Management Commissioner Brian Rockensuess regarding the shipment of contaminated materials.
“Despite the EPA’s promise to ‘notify elected officials and our state agency partners before approving the shipment of any waste from the derailment to their state or district’ … the agency failed to inform Hoosier local, state, and federal elected officials about the transportation and disposal of this hazardous material in our state,” Baird wrote.
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Baird called the shipment of contaminated materials “risky and irresponsible” and requested that all shipments be paused until all testing conducted on the materials has been disclosed and “sufficient oversight” of the company transporting the materials has been established.
Indiana’s Attorney General, Todd Rokita—without saying what the material is—told CBS 4 in Indianapolis that there’s already worse material at the landfill than what’s being brought from Ohio.
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“It’s certainly more friendly relative frankly to a lot of other materials that that very same landfill has already accepted and has been accepting for years.”
Governor Eric Holcomb has brought in an outside company to test the material.
He said the results would be shared with the public.
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