EPA watchdog investigating delays in how the agency used sensor plane after fiery Ohio derailment

The EPA's Inspector General is investigating why the agency didn't get its specialized plane loaded with advanced sensors into the air over East Palestine until four days after the disastrous Norfolk Southern derailment last year.

The Associated Press reported on a whistleblower's concerns this spring about the delays and discrepancies in the way the Environmental Protection Agency deployed its ASPECT plane that could have provided crucial information about the chemicals in the air and showed that tank cars filled with vinyl chloride weren't likely to explode as officials feared.

The controversial decision to blow open those vinyl chloride cars and burn the toxic plastic ingredient generated a huge plume of black smoke over the Ohio town and fueled lingering fears about potential long-term health impacts from the exposure to a mixture of burning chemicals.

The notice the Inspector General quietly posted Tuesday about the investigation said the watchdog will look “to determine whether the EPA and its contractors followed ASPECT flight equipment deployment procedures during the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment" in the hope of improving the response to future emergencies.

The man who wrote the software and helped interpret the data from the advanced radiological and infrared sensors on the plane said this mission differed from any of the 180 other times this plane was used since the program began after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Robert Kroutil said he is not sure why the ASPECT plane wasn't deployed sooner and why it only gathered limited information in two brief flights.

The National Transportation Safety Board determined in its investigation of the crash that the vent and burn wasn’t necessary because a feared chemical reaction wasn’t likely happening inside those tank cars, but the officials who made that decision never heard that opinion from the chemical manufacturer. And they didn’t have the detailed temperature data that Kroutil said the ASPECT plane could have provided on the tank cars. First responders on the ground had a hard time taking temperature readings because of the ongoing fire.

The EPA has defended the way it used the plane and said officials didn't even call for it to be deployed from its base in Texas until two days after the derailment despite the fact that the agency touts that the ASPECT plane can deploy within an hour of any kind of chemical disaster.

EPA spokesman Nick Conger said Wednesday that the agency will cooperate fully with the Inspector General's office.

EPA officials have said they believe the way the plane was used in East Palestine was appropriate, and officials maintain that they had enough sensors on the ground to track the chemicals that were released after the derailment and the controversial vent and burn action three days later. Officials have said that weather conditions kept the ASPECT plane from flying on the day of the vent and burn, but it’s not clear why it wasn’t in the air sooner.

Kroutil said he resigned in frustration over the East Palestine mission earlier this year from the EPA contractor he worked for called Kalman & Company. Kroutil said his team labeled the mission inconclusive because only eight minutes of data was recorded in the two flights and the plane’s chemical sensors were turned off over the creeks. But he said EPA managers changed their report to declare the vent-and-burn successful because the plane found so few chemicals when it eventually did fly.

Long after the derailment, Kroutil said that EPA officials who oversee the ASPECT plane asked the company he worked for to draft plans for the flight and backdate them, so they would look good if they were uncovered later in a public records request.

The Government Accountability Project watchdog group that's working with Kroutil has raised other questions about the EPA response in East Palestine, including whether the agency should have warned people not to garden and whether it should have declared a public health emergency after the derailment. On both those matters, the agency has defended its decisions because it believes tests have shown gardening is safe and officials believed they had all the legal authority they needed to keep the community safe and force the railroad to pay for the cleanup.