Circleville Mayor Says to Norfolk Southern, We are Cleaning up the Mess Since You are Ignoring the Problem

CIRCLEVILLE – A ongoing battle that has lasted years to have Norfolk Southern to clean up some of this owned property inside the city of Circleville, finally came to a head this week.

Circleville Mayor said he’s tried to have movement on the cleanups since 2015, and was somewhat successful and Norfolk cleaned up some parts of East Clinton Street but not all the areas entirely.

In January of 2019 Council and the Mayor has a meeting with the Ohio Rail Commission and Norfolk Southern about railroad crossing closures in Circleville during those negotiations several of the Council people and the Mayor brought up the conditions of the railroad crossings and areas of Circleville that had become dumping grounds for railroad waste including old ties and metal scraps.

“One of these dumping locations Court and Pickaway is behind a daycare, and those daycare people have seen vermin coming from those dump locations and those locations are very close to a outdoor playground where kids play everyday.”

Norfolk Southern said in that meeting that they would give City management a contact person to talk to in order to take care of these problems. The Mayor said since January he has sent over 30 emails to that contact and called Norfolk Southern over 10 times. On April 8 he sent a certified letter to them and never heard back.

“This week I had it,” said the mayor, “I called Norfolk and told them they are not paying attention anymore and we would go in and clean up their mess.”

The mayor said that within a few hours of that phone call he finally received a call back and was told they would start movement on that clean up this week. Since that phone conversation Norfolk Southern has had workers in the Court Pickaway location cleaning up some of the mess that has been left for years in that location.

“This is a small win for Circleville, said the mayor, hopefully we can have a better relationship with the railroad in the future and get some of these issues settled.”