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Rep. Jim Baird, R-Ind., leaves the House Republican Conference meeting at the Capitol Hill Club on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019.

Source: (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

ROACHDALE, Ind. — The soil brought to Indiana from the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio was brought to a landfill in Rep. Jim Baird’s congressional district.

Like Gov. Eric Holcomb, Baird is not happy that the toxic waste was brought to Indiana without the federal government at least giving the state a heads-up beforehand. Baird wants any further deliveries of soil, if there are any, halted until more testing can be done.

“My interest is maybe pausing this delivery process until we can identify those characteristics that are necessary to make sure it’s safe,” Baird told All Indiana Politics.

The soil is already being tested by the EPA in East Palestine for dioxins and then re-tested in Indiana by a third-party lab contract by Gov. Holcomb.

Baird said that he trusts the work that Heritage Environmental will do to keep the toxic waste contained, saying that taking in waste like this is not uncommon for operations like the one in Roachdale.

But, he reiterated that his beef with the whole situation is that the EPA simply dropped the soil off without any warning ahead of time.

“We need to understand the local people, the local official,” he said. “We need to know when that material is moving through an area. That’s where we feel the Department of Transportation and the EPA should have coordinated with local officials to make sure they understood what was coming.

The EPA had said that they had notified states where the waste was being taken, but both Baird and Holcomb have since refuted that claim.