Town Charges Railroad Violates Waste-Handling Restrictions 

By Andrew Gorosko

The town has notified the state attorney general that solid waste handling now being done by the Housatonic Railroad Company at a site east of its Hawleyville rail terminal constitutes an illegal expansion of the railroad’s waste handling, in direct violation of the attorney general’s recent legal warning to the railroad.

In a September 2 letter to state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, submitted by First Selectman Joe Borst and Planning and Land Use Director George Benson, the two town officials state, “The acceptance and processing of unsorted [construction and demolition] materials, and most recently the transferring of some operations from the original 13-acre parcel owned by Danbury Railroad Company to an adjacent 20-acre parcel owned by Maybrook Railroad Company constitute an expansion of the solid waste facility operations in direct violation of your letter dated August 19, 2009.”

In that letter, Mr Blumenthal strongly warned the railroad not to violate the law in connection with its solid waste handling. In that letter, Mr Blumenthal wrote that he is concerned by reports that the railroad is expanding its solid waste operations without yet having received a permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to do so.

“Nothing in the Clean Railroads Act of 2008 permits an expansion of operations beyond what existed at the time of enactment without appropriate environmental permits. To the extent that you are accepting or processing more or different waste than you accepted or processed at the time of the enactment of the Clean Railroads Act of 2008, you must stop immediately, or face potential court enforcement on this violation as well,” Mr Blumenthal wrote.

In the September 2 letter to Mr Blumenthal, Mr Borst and Mr Benson wrote that, “The land use agency staff has observed local haulers with roll-off dumpsters entering and unloading material at the facility. This material is obviously not pre-sorted and not from a state-licensed facility.”

The letter adds, “On September 2, land use agency staff accompanied by [a DEP solid waste inspector] observed that the railroad is dumping and possibly pre-sorting material at a location 2,500 feet down along the railroad track from the facility. This site is not visible from the main roads or the solid waste facility. This new site is also located on a separate parcel of land than the [railroad’s waste] transfer facility and not included in the permit application to [DEP].”

The railroad’s waste handling activities have come into the spotlight amid its controversial application to the DEP to expand and broaden the extent of its solid waste handling at its 13-acre rail terminal. The railroad transfers solid waste from heavy trucks onto railcars for shipment by rail to out-of-state landfills for disposal.

When Congress approved the Clean Railroads Act of 2008, it required that the health and safety aspects of solid waste handling by railroads to be subject to regulation by the state DEP. Before then, railroads had been subject only to federal regulations.

In the town’s letter to Mr Blumenthal, Mr Borst and Mr Benson explain that information from the railroad sent to the town in 2007 described the railroad’s activities at the site as the “transloading of construction and demolition materials only.”

Attempts to reach Edward Rodriguez, the railroad’s general counsel, on the morning of September 3 for comment on the town’s letter to Mr Blumenthal were unsuccessful.

At an August 19 meeting of the Inland Wetlands Commission (IWC), Mr Rodriguez agreed to submit a wetlands permit application to the IWC in connection with the railroad’s waste-handling expansion plans for its site. But Mr Rodriquez added that the railroad would reserve the legal right to challenge whether the IWC has wetlands jurisdiction over the railroad.

The railroad has an application pending before the DEP to increase its solid waste handling from 450 tons to 2,000 tons daily, and also to increase the range of solid waste that it handles.

Until now, the solid waste shipped out by rail has largely been construction/demolition debris. In the permit application under review by the DEP, the railroad seeks to also handle contaminated soils, used casting sand, coal fly ash, dredge spoils, ash from resource recovery plants, sludge ash, treated woods, and scrap tires in the form of crumbed tires, shredded tires, and whole tires. The railroad’s DEP permit application indicates that it wants permission to operate the waste transfer station seven days a week, 24 hours a day.