Norfolk Southern has agreed to pay the village of East Palestine, Ohio, $22 million in a settlement related to its February 2023 train derailment in the community.
That derailment, and the company’s subsequent handling of the event, have negatively impacted residents’ health and safety. This settlement is the latest in a number of agreements the company has made in an effort to repair some of the damage the derailment and burning of toxic chemicals has done to the village.
In a release, East Palestine said it “recognizes the approximately $13.5 million in prior payments that Norfolk Southern has already made directly to the village since the derailment.” Those payments, it noted, have been directed toward replacing fire and police equipment, renovating the East Palestine train depot and improving the village’s water treatment facility. The company and village also underlined Norfolk Southern’s $25 million commitment to upgrade East Palestine City Park.
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As part of the settlement between the village and the rail company, Norfolk Southern will discontinue planning and work on its First Responder Training Center, which would have been built in the village.
The company said in 2023 it planned to invest at least $20 million in the new center over the course of 10 years, and that it would operate the facility at no cost to the village or its taxpayers. It would have hosted firefighters and first responders from Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and surrounding areas and provided “specialized training for responding to rail and other transportation-related emergencies,” the company said in 2023, when it broke ground on the facility. Norfolk Southern has agreed to train East Palestine first responders at other training centers in the region.
The company will transfer its ownership of about 15 acres of land intended for the training facility to the village “for another productive use,” which East Palestine officials will determine without the rail company’s input.
A Norfolk Southern spokesperson declined to share any further details about the settlement and did not disclose why the village and the company had jointly deemed the facility “not feasible,” nor whether it had plans to build a similar facility elsewhere. The mayor and village manager’s office in East Palestine did not return Sourcing Journal’s request for comment.
Norfolk Southern has poured cash into its settlements and remediation efforts in the wake of the derailment. Last year, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found Norfolk Southern had unnecessarily invoked a “vent and burn” strategy—which the agency said should be “a last resort”— that burned hazardous chemicals, without first considering other, safer removal options that could have prevented the further spread of dangerous chemical substances.
The settlement costs come on top of the cost of the company’s own cleanup and recovery efforts.
In September 2024, a judge approved a $600 million settlement from Norfolk Southern to East Palestine residents. A bulk of the payments owed to residents in the settlement have been delayed by an appeal filed in an effort to discern whether the settlement amount was high enough.
In May 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency said it had struck a deal with the rail company that would see it paying a $15 million civil fine, reimbursing the EPA for cleanup costs, setting up a $25 million medical exam fund for East Palestine residents, at least $25 million to monitor water quality in the area and more. In total, the settlement cost Norfolk Southern an additional $310 million, just days after the initial resident-focused settlement had been reached.
Despite the payouts it has agreed to make, Norfolk Southern still faces other pending legal action related to the derailment.
