EAST PALESTINE — Two years after the Norfolk Southern train derailment, the railroad estimates two more months of cleanup are needed at the site where the cars derailed, chemicals were spilled and a vent-and-burn was performed.

“We are letting the result of what we see guide us. I don’t want to make a presumption and say it’s going to be done by a certain date,” Norfolk Southern Regional Manager of Environmental Operations Chris Hunsicker told East Palestine Village Council last week. “But right now, what we are looking at with the restoration and evaluation, we are probably looking at a couple months here. There will be monitoring that will go for a long period of time, based on what we are doing and based on the agreement with the Department of Justice. We are looking at a 10-year period after we get done with our actions.”

The agreement is part of the DOJ’s $135 million settlement with Norfolk Southern to pay for the cleanup and continue to monitor the environmental impacts.

Hunsicker said that as of March 10, two more digs remained at the east end of the site — one on a culvert beneath the tracks with that work already underway and another small area that he described as being roughly the size of council chambers at village hall.

The evacuation is to remove soil that sampling showed detections of 2-butoxyethanol — a colorless liquid with a fruity odor used as a solvent in paint products, household cleaners and herbicides that when exposed to can cause irritation of the nose and eyes, headache, a metallic taste and vomiting. Approximately 25,000 gallons of the chemical also known as ethylene glycol monobutyl ether was spilled during the derailment.

“Down there at the east end, we detected some 2-butoxyethanol. It’s part of the derailment in one of the cars,” Hunsicker said. “In that eastern end, we saw some areas that had elevated concentrations, not particularly too high, but elevated. We saw a higher spot there so we are getting that hot spot out.”

Hunsicker said what is not being detected is vinyl chloride. Over a million pounds of that chemical were released and burned off over the village during the vent-and-burn. Appendix E in the work plans called for a village-wide reassessment of soil through resampling with extra scrutiny at the site itself. Appendix E is now complete with no recent detections of vinyl chloride found. The last detection of the chemical at the site was in November.

“We are not talking about vinyl chloride pockets at all. We have done a very thorough assessment of the situation on the site,” Hunsicker said. “We’ve done our doublecheck. That is all completed. We are working through those reports and working with the agencies to get those finalized. We are not worried about a vinyl chloride situation here at the site all at.”

Most of the work left to do is restoration — rehabilitating land back to pre-derailment conditions.

“Getting the site restored is really what we are working on, getting these properties back to what they looked like beforehand,” Hunsicker said.