WASHINGTON, March 9,
2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Norfolk Southern
Corporation (NYSE: NSC) President and CEO Alan H. Shaw will deliver testimony Thursday
before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Shaw will provide details on Norfolk Southern's commitment to
making it right in East Palestine
and the region, progress on environmental remediation, and the
company's focus on safety. Below is his full testimony as provided
to the committee.
Testimony of Alan
Shaw
President and Chief Executive Officer,
Norfolk Southern Corporation
Chairman Carper, Ranking Member Capito, and distinguished
members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear
today to discuss the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. My name is Alan
Shaw, and I have been the President and CEO of Norfolk
Southern since May 2022. I look
forward today to sharing our progress cleaning the derailment site,
assisting families whose lives were disrupted, investing in the
community, and making Norfolk Southern and the railroad industry
safer. I am deeply sorry for the impact this derailment has had on
the people of East Palestine and
surrounding communities, and I am determined to make it right.
We will clean the site safely, thoroughly, and with urgency. We
are making progress every day. Working now under the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency's recent Unilateral Administrative
Order, we have submitted a long-term removal plan that will guide
our comprehensive testing program for the community's water, air,
and soil. That testing is guided by science, and we will continue
to share the results transparently. The Ohio and U.S. Environmental Protection
Agencies, as well as other local agencies, are continually
monitoring the air and water quality in East Palestine and report that both the air and
water are safe.
Financial assistance cannot change what happened, but it is an
important part of doing the right thing. To date, we have committed
to reimbursements and investments of more than $20 million in total, including by helping more
than 4,200 families through our Family Assistance Center located in
East Palestine. Supporting first
responders has been a particular area of focus, and our
contributions include more than $3
million to assist the East Palestine Fire Department. I would like to
express again my profound admiration for the first responders from
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia who responded to the
derailment.
I want to be clear: this financial assistance is just a down
payment. I've met with community leaders, business owners, school
officials, clergy, and others to begin to identify ways we can
invest in the future prosperity of East Palestine and support the long-term needs of
its people. We will continue to invest in East Palestine for as long as it takes to help the
community recover and thrive.
We are also committed to learning from this accident and working
with public officials and the industry to make railroads even
safer. In the meantime, we have already launched a series of
immediate steps to enhance safety, based on the facts in the
National Transportation Safety Board's preliminary report. We look
forward to cooperating with the NTSB as it continues its
investigation into the root cause of the accident as well as its
wider investigation.
I. Our Commitment to Remediation and Monitoring
I have visited the East Palestine area frequently since the accident.
I've met with residents of the community. I've heard their
concerns, and I understand why they are worried. Their feedback has
informed our approach. Norfolk Southern is working around the clock
to remediate the remaining issues and monitor for any impact on
public health and the environment. We continue to work in close
coordination with federal, state, and local governments and others
to conduct environmental monitoring and to develop and carry out
near- and longer-term clean-up activities. The remediation plan and
each step of our longer-term efforts will be implemented at the
direction of the U.S. EPA pursuant to the Agency's Unilateral
Administrative Order.
Norfolk Southern specialists remain on-scene, assisted by
multiple derailment and environmental contractors. These teams have
contained, diverted, and treated affected portions of nearby
waterways, have flushed nearly a mile of surface waterways, and are
capturing rainwater within the contaminated areas for temporary
storage and disposal. To date, we have recovered and transported
more than 3.5 million gallons of potentially affected water from
the site for disposal at EPA-approved facilities.
We also are working to safely remove affected soil, and our
crews have removed more than 2,300 tons from the site. We have
removed waste to landfills specifically engineered and permitted to
safely handle this type of material. Our work will continue until
the job is done.
To date, monitoring of East Palestine's public drinking water and private
water wells by multiple state and local authorities and Norfolk
Southern shows that the water is safe to drink and there are no
harmful levels of substances related to the derailment. Beginning
immediately after the derailment and now at the direction of the
U.S. EPA, we have implemented a comprehensive testing program to
monitor the quality of the community's air. The U.S. EPA has
monitored air near schools and residential areas, in several
government buildings, upwind of the derailment site, and downwind
of the derailment area. Norfolk Southern's outdoor air monitoring
program has collected millions of data points from around the
derailment site and throughout the community. The results of these
tests continue to demonstrate that the air is safe to breathe. In
addition, in consultation with the U.S. EPA, we have been
performing indoor air quality screening for residents. To date,
nearly 600 homes have been screened; none of the results indicate a
health risk from incident-related substances.
We continue to listen to the experts and cooperate with state,
federal, and local government agencies. We are committed to this
monitoring for as long as necessary. We have also created a
website, NSMakingItRight.com, to provide the latest information to
residents of East Palestine and
the surrounding communities.
II. Our Commitment to the Community
I want the people of East Palestine and the surrounding communities to
know that Norfolk Southern and I are deeply committed to them and
their recovery. To date, we have invested more than $13 million as a down payment and provided
support to more than 4,200 families through our Family Assistance
Center in East Palestine,
including:
- More than $3 million in
reimbursements and support to the East Palestine Fire Department for fire equipment
used in the derailment response;
- A $1 million fund available
immediately to community leaders to identify where donations can do
the most good;
- Another $1 million fund to
support the immediate needs of the community, overseen by a Norfolk
Southern craft railroader who lives in East Palestine and has been hired to serve as a
community liaison, reporting directly to my office;
- $300,000 to the East Palestine City School District to support the
district's academics, athletics, extracurricular activities, and
long-term contingency planning regarding the impacts of the
derailment;
- Funding and coordination of cleaning and air monitoring
services for the East Palestine
Elementary and High Schools; and
- $65,000 to the East Palestine Youth Sports Association to allow
children to play in sports leagues for free for the year.
We have committed another $7.5
million in financial assistance to reimburse Pennsylvania emergency responders and health
and environmental agencies for costs related to the derailment. And
I personally have committed almost $450,000 to fund scholarships for seniors at
East Palestine High
School.
In addition to the nearly 200 Norfolk Southern employees and
contractors who have been in East Palestine to help with remediation and
financial assistance, we also have many employee volunteers who
have come to the community to help. To offer just one example of
how they are finding ways big and small to make a difference, our
new community liaison recently observed that a local flower shop
missed out on one of its biggest sales days of the year,
Valentine's Day, due to the disruption caused by the derailment. He
ordered 100 bouquets of flowers from the shop and, with the help of
our volunteers, distributed them to residents at a local assisted
living community. That is the Norfolk Southern culture in action,
and I could not be prouder.
Again, this is a down payment. I am going to see this through.
There are no strings attached to our assistance—if residents have a
concern, we want them to come talk to us. I understand how much
East Palestine means to each
resident, and we are committed to making this right.
III. Our Focus on Safety
We are committed to making the rail industry safer. We will
analyze and address the NTSB's investigation results when they are
available, but we are not waiting to act.
The NTSB's preliminary report released last month reflected that
the Norfolk Southern crew was operating the train within our
protocols and below the speed limit. The sensors in place to
identify overheated axles operated properly, and the crew took the
appropriate action when they received the alert. We currently spend
$1 billion a year on technologies,
equipment, and infrastructure to enhance safety. But the safety
mechanisms in place did not prevent this accident, so we are
focused on learning from this incident and working with industry to
make changes.
The morning after the derailment, I spoke to NTSB Chair
Jennifer Homendy and pledged the
full cooperation of Norfolk Southern in the NTSB's investigation.
Chair Homendy has said publicly that the derailment occurred at the
twenty-third car, a hopper car, with a particular focus on a
catastrophic failure of the wheel bearing on this car. This car
carried plastic pellets, and it was the combination of those
pellets and a hot axle that appear to have started the fire.
Neither Norfolk Southern nor the other Class I railroads own
plastic-pellet hopper cars. That's one reason why an industry-wide
comprehensive approach, including railcar owners, car
manufacturers, leasing companies, equipment makers, and the
railroad companies, is essential to help improve safety as the rail
industry continues to provide the logistical infrastructure that
enables the United States' economy
to grow. It's going to take all of us—and we're eager to lead that
effort.
As an initial step—and focusing on what we can do on our own—we
are making our network of early-warning sensors stronger. Shortly
after the derailment, I instructed my team to immediately look at
steps we can take to improve safety further, and we are taking the
following actions:
- Enhancing the hot bearing detector network;
- Piloting next-generation hot bearing detectors;
- Deploying more acoustic bearing detectors;
- Accelerating our Digital Train Inspection program; and
- Analyzing—with others in the industry—available data for
patterns that could provide earlier warnings of potential safety
issues, and partnering with other railroads to review best
practices, including how the industry should respond to
high-temperature alarms.
An essential part of our effort to make Norfolk Southern an even
safer company is to further strengthen our safety culture. To
describe how we are doing that, I would like to provide some
important context on the new strategy we announced for Norfolk
Southern at the end of last year. In a significant departure from
the railroad industry's recent past, we deliberately moved away
from a singular focus on operating ratio, which is a common
industry measure of efficiency. Instead, we are taking a more
balanced approach to service, productivity, and growth.
As just one example of what our strategy means in practice,
instead of furloughing workers during periodic economic downturns,
we intend to use the opportunity to invest in our workforce and
provide additional training. When we do that, it makes us a more
resilient company that is better able to serve our customers, and
it creates more career opportunities for our craft railroaders. We
hired craft railroaders aggressively throughout 2022 and continue
to do so this year.
Our new strategy goes hand-in-hand with our intensified focus on
culture and employee engagement, with an emphasis on transparency
and collaboration. I know that when Norfolk Southern is successful,
it is because our craft colleagues are getting the job done for our
customers and the U.S. economy. I have spent countless hours in the
field in the 10 months I have served as CEO, thanking our
front-line railroaders for their service and listening to their
ideas on how to make Norfolk Southern better.
When we completed the recent round of national labor
negotiations, with a historic and well-deserved 24 percent pay
increase, I committed immediately to begin negotiations at the
local level on quality-of-life issues like paid sick leave. We did
what we said we were going to do and have already reached
agreements on paid sick leave with three of our unions.
IV. Our Commitment to Industry Action
We are working with others in the industry in moving forward.
All seven Class 1 railroads recently announced that we will join
the Federal Railroad Administration's (FRA) Confidential Close Call
Reporting System (C3RS). Norfolk Southern was already actively
participating in the C3RS Working Group that is part of the
Department of Transportation's Railroad Safety Advisory Committee.
With all Class 1 carriers joining the FRA's program, Norfolk
Southern is building upon its own long-standing Close Call
Experience Program.
And we believe it is important that we leverage Norfolk
Southern's data, as well as data from industry partners, to
reevaluate alarm threshold temperatures for bearing heat sensors.
Norfolk Southern's wayside detectors trigger an alarm at a
temperature threshold that is among the lowest in the rail
industry. Our wayside heat detectors are regularly inspected every
30 days and are spaced more closely than many others in the
industry. We are also exploring new technologies and refinements to
current systems.
V. Conclusion
Finally, Chairman Carper, Senator Capito and members of the
Committee, I want to state again how deeply sorry we are for the
impact of this derailment on East Palestine, surrounding communities and all of
the people who have been affected. We are making progress in the
recovery and know our work is not yet done. On behalf of the more
than 19,700 hard-working employees of Norfolk Southern, I pledge
that we won't be finished until we make it right. Thank you for the
opportunity to testify before you today, and I look forward to your
questions.
About Norfolk Southern
Since 1827, Norfolk Southern
Corporation (NYSE: NSC) and its predecessor companies have safely
moved the goods and materials that drive the U.S. economy. Today,
it operates a customer-centric and operations-driven freight
transportation network. Committed to furthering sustainability,
Norfolk Southern helps its customers avoid 15 million tons of
yearly carbon emissions by shipping via rail. Its dedicated team
members deliver more than 7 million carloads annually, from
agriculture to consumer goods, and is the largest rail shipper of
auto products and metals in North
America. Norfolk Southern also has the most extensive
intermodal network in the eastern U.S., serving a majority of the
country's population and manufacturing base, with connections to
every major container port on the Atlantic coast as well as the
Gulf of Mexico and Great Lakes.
Learn more by visiting www.NorfolkSouthern.com.
View original content to download
multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/norfolk-southern-ceo-delivers-testimony-before-the-us-senate-committee-on-environment--public-works-301767590.html
SOURCE Norfolk Southern Corporation