Vice President JD Vance said his return to the village of East Palestine, Ohio, on the second anniversary of the explosive train derailment was about more than just showing up.

“I think showing up is important, but there is action behind it,” he said in an interview with the Washington Examiner after a roundtable with local stakeholders, first responders and community business owners.

“So when people say we want to rebuild here, we also want to have confidence long term that it’s safe and environmentally sound. Well, the only way you can do that is by actually sending people like the (Environmental Protection Agency) continuously to finish the cleanup, to do the testing, and not just do it for a year or two years but to do it for the next 10 to 15 years,” said Vance.

For emphasis on that priority, he introduced them to new EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who was attending his first stop in the role.

“I know how much of a priority this is for Vice President Vance. And because it is such a priority for him, I will make sure that for the EPA, it is our highest priority day in, day out to do everything in our power to make sure this is completed as quickly as possible,” Zeldin told the crowd.

Vance told the Examiner that it is important that the people in the village have faith that they can rebuild their town’s sense of stability and know the administration will have their back along the way.

He pointed to the work of local leaders like Trent Conaway, the village’s mayor, as people who lead by example with grit and grace.

Conaway, along with the village’s fire chief, Keith Drabick, Zeldin, Gov. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), and Sens. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) and Jon Husted (R-Ohio), joined Vance and the village’s firefighters for the day’s events.

As a senator, Vance personally pushed the Biden administration hard to do baseline testing so residents could track their health annually to see if there had been any effect.

It fell on deaf ears. But Vance said he hasn’t given up on the proposal.

Vance said the thing people here worry about the most is the long-term impact, not about dropping dead from drinking water.

Vance told the press and community stakeholders gathered at the East Palestine Fire Department headquarters that the Trump administration would be honest and transparent about how much longer that cleanup process would take.

“I’m not saying everything’s going to go perfect, because it never does. But we’re always going to be honest and transparent with the people here,” Vance continued.

One year ago, Vance pulled up in his white pickup truck juggling two boxes of Oram’s donuts that he had picked up in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. He would bring them to residents he was meeting at a local church to mark the one-year anniversary of the train derailment that set off a massive fire and a billowing cloud of toxic smoke rolling over the community.

That derailment was followed days later by a toxic “controlled burn” meant to prevent an even larger explosion, a series of events that changed this Appalachian village for at least a generation.

Vance had been in the Senate just under three weeks when he received a late-night call from his state director that there had been a significant train derailment in East Palestine. Two days and one massive toxic explosion later, he was on the ground raising concerns about the chemicals in the air and in the waterways.

Vance, a son of Appalachia, joined then-presidential candidate Donald Trump here two weeks after the derailment on a sleet-filled day when few had any answers on what lingered in the air or what kind of chemical was lurking in the pools of mud they were walking in.

Vance told me last year on the one-year anniversary that Trump did a great service to the residents of East Palestine by forcing the political class to see them.

“You are not forgotten,” Trump said at that press conference two years ago.

On Monday, Conaway told reporters outside the East Palestine Fire Department, where Vance held his roundtable, that he was happy that Trump and Vance had never forgotten them.