Lake County Gazette

At the Feb. 28 meeting of the Barrington village board, Village President Karen Darch discussed the recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and the looming railroad merger between Canadian Pacific and Kansas City railways. 

“So just last week I was on a phone call that the White House put on for elected officials last week, which was a briefing, a pretty quick briefing on that incident in Ohio, and talking about the various roles the agencies were playing and what they were looking at,” Darch said. “And again, that just adds to our wealth of information. And the information that ultimately comes out is helpful to communities and to the regulators, into the railroads and to the tanker owners to to make changes.”

The $31 billion merger between Canadian Pacific and Kansas City railways is currently waiting on approval from the Surface Transportation Board, although communities and state representatives are urging the board to deny the request. The antitrust department of the Justice Department acknowledging the potential risk in how allowing the merger would decrease competition in the industry.

The board uploaded a livestream of its meeting to Viddler.

The Village of Barrington already has Canadian National Railways cutting through the community, which has exclusively freight cars with various substances and cargo. Darch addressed growing concerns of citizens, assuring them that all of the first responders are trained in hazardous materials response and disaster response, and village officials are also aware of the risk. She said she feels good about their relationship with both the railroads and hazmat teams if something were to happen. She also promised that any recommendations coming out of the information from the East Palestine event would be followed and enacted in their community to ensure as much safety as possible.

“But be assured that we do think about that all the time and do our best to be prepared and plan for it,” Darch said. “One thing that would be helpful is to have, we ask for cell phone or email information, particularly cell phone information from our residents to be able to contact you or for various reasons. This is one of those reasons. If there were an evacuation needed, one of the fastest ways to contact everyone is a reverse 911 type call. So if you haven't given your cell phone information into our village system, I would suggest that people do go on the website and give us your contact information, which would be very important in an event such as this.”

in other business, the board discussed a resolution for authorizing a business assistance grant to Rising Ventures, Inc., on 116 West Main St.

The board will meet again at 7:30 p.m. on Monday at the Village Hall at 200 South Hough St.