Housatonic Railroad—

Consultant Finds Waste Project Would Damage Wetlands

 By Andrew Gorosko

The Housatonic Railroad Company’s controversial proposal to expand solid waste handling at its Hawleyville rail terminal at 30 Hawleyville Road would likely environmentally damage wetlands and adjacent land in that area, according to a consultant who has reviewed the railroad’s wetlands protection application for the Inland Wetlands Commission (IWC).

In a report submitted to IWC members on November 18, James M. McManus, a soil scientist who heads JMM Wetland Consulting Services, LLC, of Newtown, wrote that based on the current construction design of the railroad’s project it “has a high probability of adverse impacts to regulated areas, both directly via the filling of a viable wetland, the substantial lowering of functional quality of an isolated wetland, which is likely a vernal pool habitat, and indirectly, through the degradation of surface water quality, especially of adjacent off-site wetlands and Pond Brook.”

“Pond Brook is considered a cold water fishery, and the [stormwater control] basin as presently designed will be too wet to establish a dense vegetative cover to effectively attenuate the stormwater runoff from the site,” Mr McManus writes.

The soil scientist adds that there is a high probability of significant adverse effects to Pond Brook and its associated wetlands.

IWC members said that they would review the report submitted by Mr McManus.

On November 18, IWC members had been poised to continue a public hearing on Newtown Transload, LLC’s, wetlands application on the solid waste handling expansion project, but the firm requested that the hearing be postponed until the IWC’s December 9 session.

Newtown Transload is the firm that would run the expanded waste handling operation for the railroad. The railroad proposes significantly expanding the tonnage and also increasing the range of solid waste that it transfers from heavy trucks onto railcars for shipment by rail for disposal at out-of-state landfills.

In a November 17 letter to the IWC, Stephen Goldblum, the manager of Newtown Transload, writes, “Due to the extent of the information that you have requested, we ask that you table your review of our application until the December 2009 meeting.”

The public hearing on the wetlands application started on October 14. It had been scheduled to resume on October 28, but Newtown Transload sought and received a hearing continuance to the November 18 session.

The waste expansion proposal has drawn strong opposition from the town government and from an ad hoc citizens group on environmental grounds. Opposition centers on the possibility of expanded waste handling polluting groundwater and surface water in the area.

The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is reviewing the application to expand solid waste handling. A DEP public hearing on the mater is expected sometime in 2010.

At the November 18 session, IWC Chairman Anne Peters said she reluctantly postponed the hearing to December 9.

“We look forward to have the railroad come back on the ninth,” she said. The IWC and the applicant will have much to discuss at that meeting, she said.