The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday it is ordering Norfolk Southern to conduct a cleanup of contaminated soil and water resources near the site of the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

The EPA also ordered Norfolk Southern to reimburse the EPA for cleaning services that will be offered to residents and businesses. These cleaning services will be conducted by the EPA and government contractors.

Norfolk Southern will also be ordered to attend public meetings and provide updates online. This comes after Norfolk Southern leaders skipped a public meeting last week, citing safety concerns.

The EPA said if Norfolk Southern refuses the order, it will require the company to pay triple the costs.

“The Norfolk Southern train derailment has upended the lives of East Palestine families, and EPA’s order will ensure the company is held accountable for jeopardizing the health and safety of this community,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan. “Let me be clear: Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning up the mess they created and for the trauma they’ve inflicted on this community. I’m deeply grateful to the emergency responders, including EPA personnel, who’ve been on the ground since day one and ensured there was no loss of life as a result of this disaster.”

As part of Tuesday’s order, the EPA said it is leading a coordinated cleanup effort with state and local officials in addition to Norfolk Southern.

Norfolk Southern said that it met with residents over the weekend. It also has claimed to have excavated 4,500 cubic yards of contaminated soil and collected 1.5 million gallons of contaminated water from the derailment site.

Although officials say the air is safe, there remain lingering concerns over the long-term impacts after vinyl chloride and other chemicals were released into the atmosphere.

State officials ordered the town to evacuate late on Feb. 5, nearly 48 hours after the derailment. Within days, residents were allowed to return.

DeWine said the water is currently safe to drink but that the state would continue to conduct additional testing. He said residents are most concerned about the long-term effects from the derailment.

“We will continue to do what needs to be done in the weeks and the months and years as we go forward," he said.

While the derailment took place in Ohio, the site was just miles from the Pennsylvania border. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said state officials are opening a criminal investigation to look into the incident.

"We will hold accountable Norfolk Southern, the company that made this vigilance necessary," Shapiro said. "The combination of Norfolk Southern's corporate greed, incompetence, and lack of care for our residents is absolutely unacceptable to me."

A Senate committee will question Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw and others on the derailment following last month’s derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio. 

The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will hold the hearing March 9.  

The committee will also question three of the region’s senators: Ohio Sens. Sherrod Brown and JD Vance, and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey. Shaw will appear alongside EPA regional administration Debra Shore, Ohio EPA director Anne Vogel, Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission executive director Richard Harrison and Beaver County Department of Emergency Services director of hazardous materials response Eric Brewer. 

On Wednesday, Brown and Vance were among a group of senators who introduced rail safety legislation intended to prevent future derailments. 

One of the proposals in the legislation would require rail carriers to provide advance notification and information to state emergency response officials about what they are transporting, the senators said. It would also require trains carrying hazardous materials to be scanned by hotbox detectors every 10 miles. It would also mandate wayside detectors. 

SEE MORE: East Palestine residents are scared to death

An interim report by National Transportation Safety Board indicated that a hotbox detector found the train’s bearing temperature was 253 degrees above the ambient temperature. Anything above 200 degrees is considered critical. 

“It shouldn’t take a massive railroad disaster for elected officials to put partisanship aside and work together for the people we serve – not corporations like Norfolk Southern,” said Brown. “Rail lobbyists have fought for years to protect their profits at the expense of communities like East Palestine and Steubenville and Sandusky. These commonsense bipartisan safety measures will finally hold big railroad companies accountable.”

Another aspect of the bill would increase the amount the U.S. Department of Transportation can fine companies for safety violations. 

“Through this legislation, Congress has a real opportunity to ensure that what happened in East Palestine will never happen again. We owe every American the peace of mind that their community is protected from a catastrophe of this kind,” said Vance.

As Norfolk Southern’s CEO prepares to go before the Senate this week, the company released a six-point safety plan in response to last month’s derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

The plan was based on the National Transportation Safety Board's initial findings, Norfolk Southern said. The company also had to respond to a derailment on Saturday in Springfield, Ohio, which temporarily prompted a “shelter-in-place” order for nearby residents.

"Reading the NTSB report makes it clear that meaningful safety improvements require a comprehensive industry effort that brings together railcar and tank car manufacturers, railcar owners and lessors, and the railroad companies," said Norfolk Southern President and CEO Alan H. Shaw. "We are eager to help drive that effort and we are not waiting to take action."

The train was carrying many hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride. Two days after the Feb. 3 derailment, state of Ohio officials ordered the town to evacuate as chemicals were burned to prevent an explosion.

The six points of the plan include:

- Enhance the hot bearing detector network
- Pilot next-generation hot bearing detectors
- Work with industry on practices for hot bearing detectors
- Deploy more acoustic bearing detectors
- Accelerate its Digital Train Inspection program
- Support a strong safety culture

According to the NTSB's report, as the train traveled, it passed through hot bearing detectors, which detect the train's bearing temperature. About 30 miles from the site of the derailment, a temperature of 34 degrees above ambient temperature was recorded. Ten miles out, that temperature increased to 103 degrees. Near the derailment's location, that temperature was up to 253 degrees above the ambient temperature.

It is considered critical when the temperature reaches 200 degrees above the ambient temperature. At 115 degrees, the NTSB says the train must come to a stop for an inspection.

Norfolk Southern noted that its crew "operated the train within the company's rules and operated the train below the track speed limit."

As the chief executive officer of the Norfolk Southern railroad prepares to appear before a Senate committee Thursday to answer questions about the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, multiple members of Congress are speaking out about what a Scripps News investigation revealed last week: the CEO, along with other executives received millions of dollars in cash awards after the company cut costs and began running longer trains. Scripps News learned that the train's length, which spanned nearly two miles, is being investigated as a potential contributing factor in the toxic disaster.

"I want to see performance incentives for driving safety, not just for driving profits for Wall Street," said U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton.

Scripps News previously reported Norfolk Southern, which owns the train that derailed, overhauled its operations in 2019, saying in its annual report that it had begun intentionally "running fewer, heavier trains" – something critics say places cost-cutting above safety.

"This is basic physics. If you have really long trains, you have bigger forces in those trains," said Moulton. "It makes the derailments more spectacular. Not in a good way."

The Scripps News investigation found that Norfolk Southern told the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a proxy filing that one reason top executives were given large cash awards was because of the company’s "record performance on train length and weight" in 2021. They also told shareholders they had achieved a new "record" low operating ratio – a Wall Street metric that compares a railroad's operating expenses to its operating revenues.

That same year, Norfolk Southern’s then-CEO James Squires landed nearly $3.5 million in cash and at least four other executives got more than one million dollars each, including Norfolk Southern’s current chief executive officer Alan Shaw, who was executive vice president at the time.

Jared Cassity, the safety director for SMART Union, the nation’s largest railroad union, expressed concerns in the initial Scripps News report last week.

"You have these executives that are getting rewarded and so the instructions keep coming down no matter what happens. I want more. I want more. I want more and that is why you see the railroads saying that the train length is going to continue to grow no matter what," Cassity said. "The railroads are going to keep flirting with danger, keep flirting with disaster as long as people are getting rich."

In June 2022, Norfolk Southern’s chief operating officer at the time, Cindy Sanborn, appeared before the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and defended the company's newer practice of running long trains.

"Running longer trains is allowing us to more efficiently move what we can move, and safely. I do not think the evidence supports that longer trains drive derailments," Sanborn told members of Congress.

At the time, Congressman Moulton challenged that claim.

"Mr. Chairman, I hope we can examine that last question further because I think the exact opposite – that we are seeing more derailments, more train breaks, because they are so long," he said.

But when Moulton talked to Scripps News this week, he went further.

"I think that this official lied to me," Moulton said.

Scripps News discovered that just 10 weeks before Sanborn's appearance before the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which Moulton sits on, Norfolk Southern filed a disclosure with the SEC., reporting it had paid Sanborn $1.13 million in cash awards in 2021, in part, for record train length.

"I mean, frankly, she should have disclosed that before she even showed up to testify in front of Congress," Moulton said. "This is a great credit to you and your investigation that we know about this now. And and we're going to be zeroing in on this much more closely."

Sanborn retired from Norfolk Southern in December. Multiple attempts by Scripps News to reach her for comment were unsuccessful. An administrative assistant for a board Sanborn currently sits on told us that she sent Sanborn our request to speak with her, but that request went unanswered.

We also reached out to Norfolk Southern multiple times, but the company did not respond to specific questions about Moulton's comments.

The findings from the Scripps News investigation also drew scrutiny from U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R- Ohio), who represents the East Palestine, Ohio community.

"You want people to be paid for performance. Unfortunately, you have way too many train derailments in our country," Vance told Scripps News. "Instead of paying, you know, massive bonuses to railway CEO's I think we should be asking some tough questions about why we lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to safety," Vance said.

Last week, just three days after the Scripps News investigation revealed that Norfolk Southern president and CEO Alan Shaw personally received cash awards related, in part, to making the company’s trains longer, the railroad issued a press release saying, "Shaw announced today that he will donate the entirety of his pre-scheduled stock sale of $445,000 to fund scholarships for East Palestine students."

Company spokesperson Katelyn Byrd later wrote Scripps News, "Alan Shaw made this decision... without having factored in media coverage."

When asked if other executives would also donate any of their own personal cash awards or stock sales— Byrd replied, "Unable to make a forward-looking statement at this time."

Scripps News also asked if the company planned to change the performance metrics that trigger cash and other awards. In response, Byrd restated, "Unable to make a forward-looking statement at this time."

"It looks like we need to have more hearings to get into this in more detail," Rep. Moulton said. "I know that the next time any railroad official comes before me in Congress, I'm going to ask: 'What are you being paid to tell me?'"

Nathaniel Reed contributed reporting to this story. 

Contact the lead reporters on this story at mark.greenblatt@scripps.com and carrie.cochran@scripps.com.