Like I said, there are absolutely bad actors. Those orders came from the political appointees, too. I'm just saying, the way things are set up now isn't a conspiracy. It has problems, but it was set up mostly in good faith by people doing the best they could with what they had and knew.

It's not as nefarious as you think it is. There are absolutely bad actors, and some agencies and/or field offices within agencies just suck. But no one gets into environmental review to strike it rich or destroy the environment, except -maybe- the political appointees.

This also isn't the EPA telling Norfolk Southern to do whatever they want. This is more likely them saying "you -will- clean up your mess and do it right". If you doubt that, well, a lot of the regs have transparency and public outreach built in so the interested public can keep an eye on things. Alas, though, the interested public often doesn't care until it directly affects them.

They're probably just not set up for it. It takes time to do the necessary surveys and testing and report preparation. It takes less time, but still a lot of it, to write contracts, send them out for bid, and choose a consultant to do the work. The government at all levels is already understaffed thanks to years of hiring freezes and budget cuts, and I can guarantee the Trump years did a number on people's willingness to join the EPA.

Plus, what do they do when Norfolk Southern stalls on paying the bill? Add higher interest rates? I mean, sure, but levying huge fines while they get dragged through the court of public opinion would be worse than just a bill they refuse to pay while everyone else forgets about the incident.

Making Norfolk Southern do it is not uncommon for regulatory agencies. You tell the project proponent they have to do something, they hire consultants to do the thing, you make sure their work is correct and up to standards. Regulatory agencies would need a much, much higher budget if they did that all in-house, and why not make Norfolk Southern do all the work and pay for it, as long as the EPA makes them do it properly.

The fact that they already have a draft plan in review is fast for the government. Yes, it sucks, but there are so many levels of oversight, plus the consultants near me and probably in Ohio are already hella busy, that it's not a surprise. Should the EPA already know the base background dioxin contamination across the US? Sure, but now we go back to budgeting issues. No one wants to pay for this stuff until the tragedies happen.

Maybe because they won't know for sure if the contamination comes from the derailment. East Palestine was an industrial town back in the day, so there's probably all sorts of nastiness still around.

Out of date, now. The EPA has ordered testing for dioxins. In order to figure out what is due to the derailment, they'll test areas that weren't affected nearby and compare. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/02/epa-dioxin-testing-ohio-train-crash-00085339. So the outcry worked.

Once upon a time we did. My mom basically used the community pool as our summer babysitter (ah, the 80s). The one we went to as kids is gone now, but we were in an emphatically working class neighborhood to the point that we got free lunches at the community center in the summers. That park, with the community center and the pool, didn't have tennis courts, but it had baseball diamonds, soccer fields, a street hockey rink, and basketball hoops, both indoor and outdoor. And a playground, and free events like concerts. Our disinvestment in our communities should not be an excuse to treat people who are even worse off in an even shittier way.