DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) – Water and utility experts in the Miami Valley are not concerned any contamination from the East Palestine train derailment will impact the Miami Valley.
“We are not worried,” Dayton Division of Water Supply and Treatment Manager Keshia Kinney said. “This does not impact us. This is more of people who are in eastern Ohio.”
Kinney said Dayton gets its water from the groundwater system, called the Great Miami Valley Buried Valley Aquifer.
“We do not get our water from the Ohio River,” Kinney said.
Experts said the reason the the train derailment will not impact us locally is because of Ohio’s geography.
Miami Conservancy District Manager of Watershed Partnerships Sarah Hippensteel Hall said the Great Miami River Watershed is in all or parts of 15 counties in the Miami Valley. Water in our region drains south into the Great Miami River, later connecting to the Ohio River west of Cincinnati.
Our watershed does not connect with East Palestine’s at any point.
“The streams in the rivers and the water flowing off of that site is headed to the Ohio River, and that is very far away from where we are, and it does not drain anywhere near southwest Ohio,” Hall said.
While unlikely to affect us here, Dayton’s water treatment team is vigilant in making sure the water we consume every day is safe.
“We have an extensive monitoring early warning system that has over 500 wells that we do samples that basically forms a barrier around our active production well that we use to produce our water,” Kinney said. “We also have several water quality parameters that we monitor on daily basis at the treatment plants.”
After the concerns raised from the derailment, Hall said it’s a reminder of how important it is to protect our waterways.
“We do need to make sure that we’re prepared for the unexpected in the future, and our jurisdictions have been thinking about this kind of unexpected hazard that could happen,” Hall said.
2 NEWS also reached out to Public Health-Dayton and Montgomery County. Officials there also are not worried about any health threats from air or water contamination in the Miami Valley.
