ROMULUS (WWJ) - Officials in Romulus said they were caught off guard when they were selected to accept toxic waste from the site of a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, on Friday — and now they're doing everything to stop it from coming in.
While some material has already made it to Wayne County, Kevin Krause, the Director of Community Safety and Development in Romulus, told WWJ's Mike Campbell that he will continue to fight against any further shipments — which have so far been halted — for the safety of future generations.
"Unfortunately we were caught a little bit by surprise by the notification that we were gonna be accepting this waste,' Krause told Campbell.
Krause explained the city of Romulus is exempt from participating in the permitting process, so elected officials had no idea that permits were issued and the Wayne County site had been chosen to take hazardous soil and liquid from the derailment last week.
The disaster started after roughly 50 freight cars, including 11 carrying hazardous materials, jumped the tracks on the outskirts of East Palestine near the Pennsylvania state line around 9 p.m. on Feb. 20. Mounting concern about a potential, uncontrolled explosion prompted officials to release and burn toxic vinyl chloride from five rail cars.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said in a statement on Thursday that that “Norfolk Southern brought in large dump trucks to move contaminated soil to U.S. Ecology Wayne Disposal, a licensed hazardous waste disposal facility in Michigan. This will be a continuous effort to properly manage and safely dispose of the waste. So far, 4,832 cubic yards of soil have been excavated from the ground and more may be removed as cleanup proceeds. When the process begins to dig up the tracks and remove the soil underneath, that soil will be hauled away immediately and taken to a proper disposal facility.”
Wayne County Executive Warren Evans said in a press conference on Friday that they discovered two of the "proper disposal facilities" were in Romulus and Van Buren Township.
"And have we've had to deal with this," Krause added. "It's classified to take the highest classified toxic waste into the injection well."
City officials have been trying to shut down the disposal site by stopping the transfer of the permit when Republic bought the site in 2020. Despite Republic working with the city to make sure every safety precaution is met, Krause said they still don't like that waste continues to come to Wayne County.
"We didn't have the decision to make it," Krause said over the waste from Ohio. "But it's a reality we have to deal with and we're going to continue to fight and hopefully hopefully this stuff doesn't come in and end up down that well.
We don't want to see our children and our children's children be dealing with decisions that were made by our generation."
You can listen to the entire interview here or on the free Audacy App and use the rewind feature to the live interview at 7:30 a.m.