The E.P.A. administrator, Michael S. Regan, said in a statement on Friday that the actions were collectively intended to “hold Norfolk Southern fully accountable for jeopardizing the community’s health and safety.”
He added, “No community should have to go through what East Palestine residents have faced.”
The fire caused by the derailment lasted days, wafting clouds of foul smoke over the area. Several days after the crash, Norfolk Southern workers vented and burned five rail cars containing vinyl chloride — a dangerous chemical used to make plastic pipes — to prevent an explosion that could have dispersed the residue over an even greater radius.
It might take months or even years before health officials know whether the symptoms East Palestine residents suffered after the discharge — such as scratchy eyes and throats, rashes, vomiting and headaches — will cause long-term health problems directly linked to the derailment.
Medical guidance is limited at the moment, and confidence in the company and the federal government sparse. Primary care physicians in the area, booked for weeks, say that without more toxicology data, they are not equipped to diagnose chemical poisoning; they are simply treating symptoms with ibuprofen and ointment.
The Justice Department did not specify the total amount needed to reimburse government agencies for their response and cleanup efforts. The penalties requested amount to about $120,000 for each day the company is deemed to be in violation of the Clean Water Act.
The department’s complaint contains a sobering geographic overview of the far-reaching environmental damage that can be inflicted on an area’s rivers, creeks, storm water systems and irrigation ditches by the derailment of a single freight train.
The affected waterways start with a small ditch north of the railway, which is a tributary of a small creek called Sulphur Run. That is connected to Leslie Run, Bull Creek, the North Fork of Little Beaver Creek, Little Beaver Creek and, eventually, the Ohio River, the country’s third largest.
Environmental officials in the Ohio Department of Natural Resources have reported deaths of thousands of aquatic animals in the five-mile span of waterway from the accident to the junction of Bull Creek and Little Beaver Creek as a result of high contamination levels.