I'm standing along the railroad tracks where a year ago a Norfolk Southern Freight

train derailed 38 cars derailed and 20 of those cars were carrying hazardous

materials one of those materials was vinyl chloride. This led to big

environmental problems and in the days after the crash there was this big plume of

smoke when they decided to vent off and burn off the vinyl chloride. This became a national story and it became really a spotlight on something that we're seeing

happening just about every other day across the country and that's freight rail derailments.

And this is still an active construction site Norfolk Southern has

been doing cleanup just about ever since. We've got our two sets of tracks but

if you look on down the tracks here there's a white sign on the left of the north track

that's actually the sign for the PA border. So that's about where we are in reference to Pennsylvania and Ohio.

This is Christopher Hansaker. Norfolk Southern's... are in reference to Pennsylvania in Ohio.

This is Christopher Hansaker,

Norfolk Southern's regional manager of environmental operations.

He's giving us a tour of the cleanup site

that he's been in charge of since the immediate wake of the derailment.

So when we got here right then, you know, there were cars on fire.

You know, that was still the immediate response.

It was getting that situation under control, controlling that hazard.

Since then, Norfolk Southern has spent more than 800 million dollars on cleanup,

clearing away the rail cars, assessing the environmental damage,

removing all the dirt doused with toxic chemicals.

And now the final phase, replacing what it dug up with clean soil and limestone.

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