Here’s a statement from the Office of Governor Moore corroborating my thoughts. I found it here from WMAR Baltimore

"The safety of Marylanders is the governor’s highest priority. The water from East Palestine being treated by Clean Harbors is not at levels that would be considered hazardous waste but out of an abundance of caution, the state is treating it as such to ensure our communities are safe. Clean Harbors is a world class facility in Baltimore, and they are well-equipped to handle this project. The administration will continue to work with the federal government to ensure we have the resources and manpower needed to handle treatment in a secure manner."

If we know there’s contaminant in it, I think there’s an obligation to treat it, regardless of how “safe” we can deem it to be. I called it what I did to emphasize the ease and low risk of treating it, not to advocate that it’s safe to be just dumped anywhere. But if no state wants it even treated within their borders, obviously none of them are gonna volunteer to just straight up dump it.

They have a system that can extract organic contaminants from water more efficiently and cheaply than other methods. Sure other methods exist, even incineration is a viable option to get rid of this waste, but like us now, everyone is playing chicken about taking it.

If you read the statement Clean Harbors released to Baltimore City officials, they said the wastewater was initially tested and found to contain vinyl chloride levels between 0-62 parts per billion among the various railcars. For reference, the EPA set the regulatory limit for vinyl chloride in waste to be 200 ppb under the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act of 1976. It’s minimal contaminant that requires simple treatment. Sure it’s good to be skeptical, but shouldn’t we also trust the national experts to decide where is the best place to get rid of this waste? This waste has to go somewhere.

The Clean Harbors Baltimore plant is not on the property. It’s on the other side of the city. They just receive wastewater by truck or rail, treat it, and discharge the cleaned water into the sewer. It just ultimately ends up at Back River just like all city sewage does.

Environmental chemist in the city here that is very familiar with this situation. This water was not any sort of waste from the accident. It was rainwater and stream water collected from areas around the cleanup site. All the water in these tanks has been described by individuals involved as “borderline drinkable.” We’re not talking about tanks of green glowing sludge here. Testing did find trace amounts of vinyl chloride still in the water, so obviously the EPA wants some additional treatment on it before it can be dumped anywhere. Clean Harbors Baltimore is one of few facilities in the country that could’ve taken this water and easily and routinely treated it. They are treating thousands of gallons of wastewater and discharging it into the sewer every day, and that discharge is constantly monitored for compliance by the plant’s internal lab with verification from a third-party lab’s analysis, and the city samples and monitors the discharge as well. This project would’ve created no additional strain on the Back River treatment plant. This could’ve been an easy opportunity for local representatives to praise a unique capability the city possesses to help the nation clean up from an environmental tragedy. But instead our representatives are spreading false information and making decisions based on fear of a situation they don’t know anything about and twisting the narrative themselves to make the city look worse, making it look like the EPA chose the Baltimore sewer to become a national toxic waste dump or something. It’s so disappointing to see all this play out like this.