Norfolk Southern Agrees to $310M Govt Settlement

Facts

• Norfolk Southern agreed to a $310M settlement related to damages caused by its Feb. 2023 train crash in East Palestine, Ohio, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday.¹
• The settlement includes an estimated $235M towards past and future cleanup, a $15M penalty for violating the Clean Water Act, $25M for a 20-year community health program that will monitor the mental and physical health in impacted counties, and a $15M for water monitoring fund.²
• Norfolk Southern agreed last month to pay $600M to settle all class-action claims from people who live within a 20-mile (32 km) radius of the crash site as well as personal injury claims from those within a 10-mile (16 km) radius. A federal judge approved the deal on Wednesday.³
• Thursday’s agreement won't add to the $1.7B Norfolk Southern expects to spend on total costs associated with the incident, and the company won’t face any criminal charges. Some residents believe that the company is getting off light compared to the damage it caused.⁴
• Now, the company only faces one remaining investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board into the cause of the derailment, and it is still trying to resolve a lawsuit from the state of Ohio. The Board believes it was caused by an overheating bearing that wasn't caught in time.⁵

Sources: ¹Forbes, ²US EPA, ³Associated Press (a), ⁴Associated Press (b) and ⁵ABC News.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Dayton. While residents of East Palestine and the surrounding areas desperately want to put last year's traumatic train derailment behind them, many are fairly wondering if they will reap adequate rewards from Norfolk Southern's recent settlements. The railway is a massive company that rakes in billions, and its failures led to a catastrophic event with scary short and long-term health effects. It is hard to calculate all the damage the derailment caused, but when calculating payments, it seems like community residents are being shortchanged by the multibillion-dollar railway.
• Narrative B, as provided by Norfolk Southern Newsroom. Norfolk Southern is committed to doing everything in its power to ease the burden caused by the East Palestine derailment, and it expects to spend nearly $2B in total costs. The railway disaster was a genuinely tragic accident, and the company stands behind everyone who was impacted. From investing in health measures to improve drinking water to directly compensating residents, Norfolk Southern hopes that it can come close to fairly compensating the community.

Predictions