CURES Wants DEC To Fix Rail Pollution
Cleaner locomotives and changes to the freight rail infrastructure in Queens are needed before the state grants approval to a plan to expand a Long Island City garbage transfer station, according to a local civic group aimed at improving railroad operations in the area.
Civics United for Railroad and Environmental Solutions (CURES) recently submitted comments to the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) regarding an application by Waste Management (WM) to expand its waste facility at 38-22 Review Ave. in the Blissville section of the neighborhood.
As previously reported, the facility is being expanded as part of the city’s Solid Waste Management Plan in order for the site to receive putrescible household waste collected by the Sanitation Department from six community board areas in Queens. Trucks carrying the waste will deposit it at the Long Island City site for transfer onto WM train cars for shipment to an out-of-state landfill.
The application submitted to the DEC by WM calls for up to 2,100 tons per day of solid waste to be processed at the Long Island Facility, an increase from the current 958 tons handled daily at the location. The maximum facility storage would also be increased from 1,916 cubic yards of trash to 4,185 cubic yards in the facility’s new building, plus an additional 1,440 cubic yards stored in 40 rail containers.
The garbage will be shipped by truck along a private roadway within the WM site to the Blissville Rail Yard and then transferred onto train cars for shipment out of state. Reportedly, these trains will be shipped south to the Fresh Pond Yard, then transferred onto the CSX line north over the Hell Gate Bridge to the Bronx and points in upstate New York.
In a Mar. 26 letter to the DEC’s Jeffrey Rabkin, CURES Co-Chairs Mary Parisen and Mary Arnold took exception with the DEC’s initial conclusion that there would be “no significant adverse effect on the environment” as a result of the expansion of the Blissville facility. As proof, they offered that “the permitting process lacks inclusion of the effects of the increased use of old polluting rail technology, technology that produces harmful diesel emissions and other undue environmental burdens upon communities living along the rail corridors of western Queens.”
“We respectfully offer that citizens in our neighborhoods already live with environmental, public health and quality of life problems- much of which are the direct result of using outdated technologies and antiquated infrastructure for freight rail in western Queens,” Parisen and Arnold wrote. “The permitting of the Review Avenue facility expansion, and the exponential growth of the use of rail handling for the materials processed there, will most certainly generate significant additional environmental effects and harms if current plans go forward.”
While noting that WM and other parties involved in the shipment of solid waste through the area-including CSX and the New York and Atlantic Railway (NYA)-“have demonstrated responsibility in upgrading waste containers used in their other facilities in Brooklyn and two locomotive engines,” CURES indicated that the DEC must compel the MTA and Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to make upgrades to freight rail lines before moving forward with the proposed expansion in Blissville.
MTA and LIRR lease the Fresh Pond Yard, the Montauk and Bay Ridge branches and diesel engines used at all three locations to the NYA. Many of these engines, CURES noted, are classified as “Tier 0,” spewing excessive amounts of fumes and noise, but are nonetheless used to haul long trains of container cars full of garbage.
“And nothing has been done to date about reducing noise (measured by the FRA [Federal Railroad Administration] at more than 88 decibels in one test) and seismic effects, which are worse than ever with the longer trains and increased operations,” Parisen and Arnold noted.
The coalition chairs also found it “unconscionable” that DEC allows this facility though the MTA and LIRR allegedly “refused requests … to participate in upgrades to cleaner and safer technology that would greatly reduce the harm to communities along the rail corridor,” the CURES co-chairs stated.
They also called for the expanded use of barging “as an alternative transportation mode and an alternate route than that of further inundating Fresh Pond Yard.” The 10 acre facility with 15 tracks has an “outdated configuration” which has resulted in daily bottlenecks “that pushes rail operations beyond the confines of the yard and into surrounding neighborhoods.”
“We respectfully submit that the singularity of the junction between the CSX rail line and the LIRR at Fresh Pond Yard must be addressed during this permitting process, since there already many other claims on the very same capacity,” according to the letter. “To be clear, we are not trying to get all of NYA’s activity moved to other transportation modes, routes or terminals. Fresh Pond Yard’s limitations and freight rail impacts on communities are well understood by transportation planners.”
Members of Community Board 5’s Transportation and Public Transit committees also took exception to DEC’s conclusion about the Review Avenue site at their Mar. 27 meeting.
“It is ridiculous that they say there’s no environmental impact,” said John Maier, co-chair of the Public Transit Committee. “They’re doubling the truckloads, and they’re saying that’s not going to have any impact?”
“They’re talking about adding more freight traffic onto rails that are already over capacity,” he added.
Maier also noted that, in examining the environmental impact statement for the East Side Access project, he learned that the MTA and LIRR were looking to move “any and all freight operations out of the Sunnyside Yard” and move it down the Montauk line to, among other points, the Fresh Pond Yard.
He was also informed that the MTA had announced its intentions of eliminating the “Montauk flyover,” a rail line linking the Sunnyside Yard with the Montauk Branch in Long Island City generally used by freight trains.
Vincent Arcuri, Board 5’s chairperson, indicated that the advisory body would draft a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo imploring that the flyover remain in place “because of the anticipated future growth of freight traffic.”
