FOIA: EPA Surveilled Independent Expert & Private Citizens in East Palestine

New FOIA documents obtained by the Government Accountability Project reveal that the EPA was monitoring private citizens on Facebook, including posts by GAP whistleblower Scott Smith, an independent testing expert who has raised the alarm about a cover-up by Norfolk Southern and the EPA following the chemical tragedy. The FOIA requests show emails from Francisco Arcaute, an EPA “Community Involvement Coordinator” who was sharing posts with other EPA officials that were critical of the agency and Norfolk Southern. FOIA documents also show a coordinated effort by the EPA and Norfolk Southern to dismiss Smith’s testing results as “confusing” and “not an accurate measure of risk,” while not acknowledging Smith’s detailed response regarding these criticisms.

Government Accountability Project Senior Environmental Officer Lesley Pacey said, “This was not public engagement—it was a PR firewall. At a time when families in East Palestine were breathing toxic smoke and demanding answers, EPA was seemingly engineering a coordinated narrative and monitoring its critics like dissidents. Scott Smith was uncovering the truth about dioxins and other contaminants in East Palestine, but instead of working with him to protect public health, EPA was concerned with burying the truth and silencing the messenger.”

The emails include a resident who implied on the East Palestine Facebook group that he was running for office locally. Another post made by Smith was shared with EPA officials stating, “And Oliver says Good Night and Sweet Dreams to Mark Durno, the EPA, and all the lobbyists and PR people for Norfolk Southern…” The post included a picture of Smith’s sleeping dog, Oliver.

One EPA employee sent a message to 50 other EPA employees telling of Smith’s appearance in the East Palestine auditorium, where he “talked to nobody and then left” despite claiming he talked to EPA and Norfolk Southern that day. Another employee chimed in and said she was with Emergency Response Official Mark Durno, who met with Smith at the Pennsylvania meeting later that day. Smith said drones were used to surveil him while he was testing in East Palestine, which was also reported by NewsNation, but the source of the drones is unknown.

Smith and resident Jami Wallace said they were both contacted by Durno to remove posts from Facebook that Durno believed were misinformation. The HighWire reported on Durno in November, after Status Coup shared an audio recording in which Durno admitted that the EPA had made mistakes in its response. However, he also downplayed any connection between the health effects experienced by residents and the toxic chemical exposure.

Another GAP press release published this week includes a thorough timeline of events written up by Smith regarding his trips to East Palestine and communication with officials from the EPA and Norfolk Southern. “This timeline shows the pattern of how the EPA orchestrated this smear campaign with me and the media to undermine me,” Smith said. “The big deception the EPA had, is in the meantime, they were supposed to meet with me with Norfolk Southern, and they backed out of that meeting.”

FOIA documents confirm that Smith provided a detailed response to EPA criticism of his testing data on July 27, 2023, but the EPA did not respond to the statements in Smith’s “Clearing up the Confusion” email, as the agency responded to resident concerns about toxicity dangers. In the email chain, Smith addresses claims that he has “an agenda” in a message to William Burgess, regional manager for Norfolk Southern in the legal claims department. An East Palestine resident had spoken to Burgess over the phone and confirmed in the email chain that Burgess told the resident that Smith has an “agenda” and that the EPA will not work with him.

Durno said in the thread that Smith’s testing results were presented in a “confusing” way and the EPA needs “significantly more information” regarding Smith’s testing methods. Smith responded two days later, explaining that the EPA’s Toxic Equivalency (TEQ) measurement has limitations and “can yield an incomplete measure of human impacted dioxin burden.” Smith referenced the most recent ATSDR/CDC guidance that states “The [TEQ] method has inherent uncertainties and may not capture the true health risks of all congener exposure scenarios.”

As reported previously by The HighWire in East Palestine coverage, multiple chemicals were involved in the “controlled burn” following the train derailment, which can cause synergistic toxicity. Therefore, toxicity limits for individual chemicals cannot reliably predict the health risks associated with the toxic chemical exposure residents experienced and continue to experience.

On August 1, 2023, EPA Public Information Officer Benjamin Washburn provided a response to a private citizen’s concerns about Smith’s testing data. Washburn said Smith’s presented numbers do not accurately reflect risk and cannot be compared to EPA data. He said EPA found the TEQ value in Smith’s results, and they do indicate concentrations higher than “typical background” values, but he said this is not uncommon when collected near highways and roads.

Additionally, Washburn said control samples do not provide “meaningful data.” This email was sent five days after Smith sent his “Clearing up the Confusion” email, but it does not address Smith’s criticisms of EPA’s reliance on TEQ values to determine risk. Another email sent on August 23 by Public Inquiries Coordinator Karen Chen to a resident is nearly identical to Washburn’s statements dismissing Smith’s concerning testing results.

“They ignore that email,” Smith said. “And then they go in on August 1, and they start involving EPA Region 7 out of Kansas in an orchestrated national campaign among public affairs directors to falsely and deceptively smear me and falsely, deceptively misrepresent my testing.”

Smith has received support from environmental contamination expert Stephen Petty, who signed an affidavit supporting Smith’s testing results. Petty was retained by the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the class action lawsuit against Norfolk Southern, but his results have never been released. Instead, the lawyers utilized Dr. Arch Carson, a former employee of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Dow Chemical, and Enbridge, to communicate potential health concerns with the residents of East Palestine.

A retired career EPA Superfund program official and GAP whistleblower also spoke out against the EPA for dismissing and harassing Smith for his advocacy and independent testing for the people of East Palestine.

“There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Scott Smith has exceptional expertise in environmental sampling. People, especially EPA, should be listening very carefully to what he has to say,” the GAP anonymous whistleblower said. “I’m disgusted that my former colleagues at EPA could stoop so low as to ridicule and harass someone like Scott Smith, who has done so much to protect so many contaminated communities, including East Palestine. It’s shameful that EPA appears to be disrespecting, harassing, and bullying independent experts like Smith who have been selflessly devoting so much of their time and talent to assist disadvantaged communities obtain environmental justice. EPA should be using tax dollars to protect human health and the environment, rather than trying to unfairly smear and discredit people who develop important data that raises important doubts about EPA’s self–serving narrative.”

Smith emailed the EPA officials this week and said he is still willing to sit down with officials from the EPA, as well as Administrator Lee Zeldin and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who met with Smith previously to discuss the health impacts of the train derailment and chemical burn.

The Trump EPA provided a statement to NewsNation: “We are very concerned by claims that have come to light over the past few months. The Trump Administration is committed to maximum transparency, and as such, we intend to conduct a thorough review of decisions made in the aftermath of the train derailment. We will work to ensure the health and safety of the people in East Palestine.”

Vice President JD Vance and Zeldin visited East Palestine on the two-year anniversary, and in May, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said he was working with Vance to “find answers” for the people of East Palestine. The residents are still experiencing significant health issues, and many of them cannot afford to leave the town.

“I would have offered to move people out of town and start the process of buying their homes,” Smith said. “If you wanted to move out, you didn’t feel well, give them that option. The government had the money to do that, and the government had the power to make Norfolk Southern do it, too.”

Smith said taxpayer dollars should not be spent to surveil him and the citizens of East Palestine. There are significant redactions for a “deliberative process” in a July 20-July 21, 2023, email exchange between Public Information Officer Christina Motillal and Mark Durno as they attempt to craft a response to Journalist Stephanie Elverd with Morning Journal News.

Motilall posted a year ago about $128 million in environmental justice grants from the EPA to “support vulnerable and overburdened communities disproportionately affected by pollution and environmental health risks.” Smith, in his email to the EPA employees, asked, “Where did the $128 million in grants go?  Was any of this $128 million used to fund tax-exempt organizations/non-profits? How did this $128 million directly benefit the vulnerable and overburdened communities like East Palestine, OH, and Conyers, GA?”