The emergency response effort in Columbiana County following the East Palestine train derailment is holding up some real estate transactions.

According to Ohio Realtors Director of Local Government Affairs Veronica Cardello, a temporary waiver of well and septic inspection has directed all personnel in the health department to address the related contamination in East Palestine.

Dead birds still fall from the sky near my hometown. Their bodies hit the ground as part of the fallout of an environmental disaster that dates back to the 1970s, the result of corporate pollution that made the county I grew up in the home of one of Michigan’s most notorious Superfund sites.

It’s impossible to know what environmental and health challenges the residents of East Palestine, Ohio, will face in the years to come, but my worry is that they will know what I experienced from childhood onward: unease, loved ones getting sick and a fear of natural landscapes that should be local treasures.

In East Palestine, the derailment of a freight train last month, which was carrying toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride, has already had a clear impact on wildlife and residents. The Environmental Protection Agency continues to monitor the situation.

But the people living there must be prepared for the reality that this disaster could affect their lives in both monumental and minor ways, in a manner that is not fully visible yet. When the media frenzy fades, they should be ready to organize to ensure that the government provides necessary resources to their communities. Organizing, in my own experience, may have to continue for decades.

Unimpressed House Democrats want to put Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) on the spot by making his three FBI "whistleblowers" face public questioning about the so-called "weaponization" of the law enforcement agency. According to a report from the Washington Post, Democrats thus far have been unimpressed with what they have heard, claiming the agents Jordan has dug up have no direct evidence of wrongdoing and are just passing along second-hand anecdotes.

According to an earlier report from the New York Times, "The first three witnesses to testify privately before the new Republican-led House committee investigating the 'weaponization' of the federal government have offered little firsthand knowledge of any wrongdoing or violation of the law, according to Democrats on the panel who have listened to their accounts.

Instead, the trio appears to be a group of aggrieved former F.B.I. officials who have trafficked in right-wing conspiracy theories, including about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, and received financial support from a top ally of former President Donald J. Trump."

The Post is now reporting that Democrats are urging Jordan to let the public hear from the three, with the report explaining, "One has called repeatedly for the dismantling of the F.B.I. Another suggested that it would be better for Americans to die than to have any kind of domestic intelligence program.”

With that in mind, Democrats are now making efforts to put Jordan in a corner...

In leaked audio heard by the Guardian, a manager for one of the US’s largest rail companies can be heard explaining to a former carman that they should stop tagging railcars for broken bearings. The manager says doing so delays other cargo. The disclosure comes as federal agencies investigate the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. A wheel-bearing failure was cited as the cause of the crash in a preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board.

In late 2016, Stephanie Griffin, a former Union Pacific carman, went to her manager with concerns that she was getting pushback for tagging – or reporting for repair – railcars. Her manager told her it was OK to skip inspections.

Griffin asked if the manager could put that in writing. “That’s weird,” said the manager. “We have 56 other people who are not bad-ordering stuff out there. You’re definitely not going to get in trouble for it.”

Griffin said: “He refused to bad-order [mark for repair] cars for bad wheel bearings. My boss took issue with it because it increased our dwell time. When that happened, corporate offices would start berating management to release the cars.”

The Indiana landfill selected to house hazardous waste from the train derailment in Ohio has a history of violations, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency site.

It has had 12 quarters of noncompliance dating back to the spring of 2020, the EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online database shows. It is unclear what the specific violations are.

The landfill sits outside of Roachdale, a small town about 40 miles west of Indianapolis. Operated by Heritage Environmental Services, it is certified to handle hazardous waste. On its website, Heritage said in a release that it has roughly 14 million cubic yards of permitted landfill capacity and added that the landfill is geologically isolated.

Neither the EPA nor Heritage Environmental Services have responded to IndyStar questions regarding the facility's compliance issues.