On Monday’s broadcast of ABC’s “GMA3,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) stated that he isn’t satisfied with the clean-up efforts in East Palestine, Ohio, and that he isn’t satisfied that Norfolk Southern will change its behavior or has listened to the area’s residents.
Co-host Rhiannon Ally asked, “You met with residents of East Palestine last week. What stood out to you from that discussion? Are you satisfied with the clean-up efforts that are going on there?”
Brown responded, “No, I’m not satisfied. I’m not satisfied that this company’s going to change its behavior. I’m not satisfied they have really listened to local residents, whose lives are upended. They just want to get their lives back to normal. Norfolk Southern says they’re going to pay for everything. They said they’re going to pay for hotel stays and testing and damages, but this — one of the fears I have is, what do these chemicals mean for somebody two years, five years down the road? And I compare that to what Congress did on the PACT Act for veterans, for the hundreds of thousands of veterans who were exposed to these football-field-sized burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan and breathed all this stuff. And we passed a law, the PACT Act, that simply says, if you have one of 23 illnesses that we’ve identified in that law, you get immediate care at the V.A. without having to get a lawyer and suing and all of that. I don’t know if that’s what we’re going to need to do in East Palestine. If we do, if we write a law like that…we’re going to hold Norfolk Southern accountable for the damage they did.”
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