The wastewater that was scheduled to arrive in Baltimore from the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment will be processed elsewhere, treatment company Clean Harbors said Tuesday morning.
“While we are confident that our Baltimore facility is safe to handle and process that waste, as we have made clear from the beginning of this process, we would only be moving forward with the approval of all federal, state and local regulators,” Clean Harbors spokesman Jim Buckley said.
The news comes in response to a move by Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott to deny the Southwest Baltimore facility the ability to dump the treated wastewater from Ohio into the city’s sewer system and wastewater plant.
Local officials learned Friday that Clean Harbors facility had reached an agreement with the railroad Norfolk Southern, and it would accept contaminated wastewater from the February derailment as soon as Thursday.
The revelation stirred outrage from Baltimore area politicians and environmental groups, who worried that the treated waste would be routed through the troubled Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant in Baltimore County, just a few weeks after an explosion rocked the campus.
Following Clean Harbors statement Tuesday, it remains unclear where the 675,000 gallons of wastewater that were scheduled to go to Baltimore will be taken instead. The company deferred to the EPA and Norfolk Southern, which has selected a number of sites to take portions of the waste. Neither responded immediately to a request for comment from The Baltimore Sun.
In the meantime, Baltimore appears to have been granted a reprieve, following the mayor’s maneuvering.
Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. said Tuesday that he is “encouraged” that Clean Harbors decided to backtrack.
“We believe that this and other recent incidents at the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant reinforce the importance of our ongoing efforts to modernize the Baltimore region’s water and wastewater utilities,” he said.
Olszewski has thrown his weight behind a bill in the General Assembly that would convene a task force to evaluate a new governance structure for Baltimore’s wastewater infrastructure. Much of the infrastructure, including the Back River plant, is owned by the city but takes in waste from the more populous county.
Alice Volpitta, who serves as Baltimore Harborkeeper for the nonprofit Blue Water Baltimore, said she has heard plenty of people saying Baltimore’s rejection of the East Palestine wastewater is “NIMBY-ism at its worst,” referring to the acronym for “not in my backyard.”
But she disagreed. For one thing, the Back River plant is still in recovery. Though it is meeting its pollution limits, internal issues with equipment maintenance and staffing persist, according to inspection reports from the state. Those problems prompted the state to send a team to take charge of the plant one year ago and the state team remains on site.
For another, the area around the Clean Harbors facility is already battling a host of industrial contaminants, including air pollution from the city trash incinerator, which is nearby.
Both factors raise questions about Norfolk Southern’s selection process for its derailment waste sites, Volpitta said — and the EPA’s oversight.
“Did they do an environmental justice analysis to figure out the demographics of these neighborhoods that they were sending wastewater to?” Volpitta said.
While Clean Harbors said its Baltimore facility is safe to handle the wastewater, the company was fined about $72,000 by the EPA in 2021, according to records from the agency, after environmental inspectors noted violations there during an April 2018 inspection.
Inspectors found nine valves in equipment containing or in contact with hazardous waste that did not have a cap or plug as required. In addition, inspectors determined that air quality monitoring equipment was not calibrated properly.
The company also paid $3,200 to EPA following a November 2018 inspection, which determined the facility did not have a comprehensive process hazard review, and wasn’t keeping updated information on its processes or updated emergency contact information.
Clean Harbors did not respond to questions about the enforcement actions Tuesday morning.
For environmental groups, the debate around Clean Harbors in Baltimore presents an opportunity to elevate the discussion about industrial facilities and how they’re regulated.
The fact remains that facilities like Clean Harbors treat industrial waste full of hazardous contaminants every day in Baltimore, Volpitta said.
“If we weren’t talking about a beleaguered wastewater treatment plant, and we weren’t talking about East Palestine, then I don’t think that this issue would have gotten nearly the attention that it did,” Volpitta said. “It feels like the blinders are off now.”
The situation illuminated a lack of transparency surrounding the pre-treatment permits that Baltimore City doles out to facilities such as Clean Harbors, allowing them to discharge treated waste into the sewers, Volpitta said.
Volpitta said these permits should be more easily accessible online. Her group still hasn’t seen the city permit for Clean Harbors, and she’s wondering if the company was even required to notify the city that it would be discharging treated waste from the derailment in Ohio.
“Could this have fallen under the scope of their permit and they didn’t even have to ask for permission?” Volpitta said.
