(erielack) Chemical Coast Line FYI

[David Goessling <"dmg_@_library.ho.lucent.com">]

This from the Home News Tribune the other day....

ELIZABETH: Rail line may solve dispute with Port Authority 

Published in the Home News Tribune 

By KATHLEEN HOPKINS
STAFF WRITER

An inactive transportation link between New York City and the rest of the nation
is critical in Elizabeth's
attempts to resolve its decades-long differences with the Port Authority of New
York and New Jersey, and also could be key in solving New York City's
garbage-disposal woes.

Control over the New Jersey portion of the inactive Staten Island Rail Line is
Elizabeth's and Union County's trump card in their ongoing David-and-Goliath
battle with the port authority over land use and payments to the city by the
bistate agency.

Union County, which has teamed up with Elizabeth in its fight against the port
authority, is the designated
sponsor of a project to reactivate the rail line on the New Jersey side of the
Arthur Kill. But the county last year effectively blocked the project, partly
over dissatisfaction with the port authority's treatment of Elizabeth.

Now, as the port authority's commissioners are fighting their own border wars
among themselves, Union
County's control over its portion of the rail line could prove the bargaining
chip it needs to get Elizabeth the
money and land it wants from the bistate agency while also offering the
authority's New York commissioners something New York City desperately needs --
a trash-disposal option instead of Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, N.Y.

Elizabeth and Union County have been battling with the port authority for
control of a 177-acre parcel south of the authority's Newark Internatonal
Airport and Elizabeth Marine Terminal. The port authority has control over the
land through a lease with Continental Airlines, but has offered Elizabeth a
portion of the tract to develop and has opened negotiations to increase the
amount of money it pays the city instead of property taxes on its land holdings
in Elizabeth. In exchange, the authority wants Union County to lift its
objections to reactivating the Staten Island Rail Line.

The port authority and New York City have interests in reactivating the Staten
Island Rail Line. The line runs from the authority's Howland Hook Marine
Terminal in Staten Island over the Arthur Kill on a rail bridge parallel to the
Goethals Bridge, to Elizabeth, Linden, Roselle and Cranford.

In Cranford, freight trains could link to the Lehigh Valley Line, which has
direct connections to the National Freight Network, said Seth Kaye, senior vice
president for transportation for New York City's Economic Development Corp. Or,
they could gain the same access to the National Freight Network without having
to go through residential portions of Union County with a potential connection
to New Jersey's Chemical Coast Line, which runs north to south, parallel to the
New Jersey Turnpike, through industrial areas along the Arthur Kill, he said.
Linden, Carteret and Woodbridge share portions of that rail coast line.

Reactivating the Staten Island Rail Line would provide the ability to swiftly
move goods into and out of New York City without burdening the city's and
region's roads and bridges with additional truck traffic, Kaye said. "It's an
economic imperative, as well as a quality-of-life issue," he said of the freight
line.

"It's something that's imperative to the economic viability of Howland Hook,"
said Ronald Shiftan, deputy
executive director of the Port Authority. "Staten Island is an island. The only
way off an island is the bridges. To take cargo on trucks over the bridges is
not the most effective way to move it."

The New York City Economic Development Corp. already has spent $20 million to
rebuild its portion of the Staten Island Rail Line. Acknowledging his and Union
County's ace-in-the-hole in the ongoing negotiations, Elizabeth Mayor J.
Christian Bollwage noted, "They basically built a railroad to nowhere."

Shiftan said reactivating the rail line is a priority of the port authority
because of the potential to expand the
Howland Hook Marine Terminal to help handle the expected surge in ocean cargo in
the coming years. But he acknowledged it could have the po-tential to help solve
New York City's garbage disposal problems.

New York City has been scrambling to find ways to get garbage to alternate
disposal sites in time to meet its schedule to close the Fresh Kills Landfill in
Staten Island next year. But the city has met opposition to its interim plans to
truck its trash to disposal sites in New Jersey. Its long-term plans in-clude
proposals to ship the waste to landfills in Virginia and Pennsylvania.

"Any garbage that goes out of state eventually has to go on a train," said
Shiftan. "You want to put it on a trainas soon as possible. The logical place is
Staten Island."

Bollwage said he suspects New York City's urgency in wanting the Staten Island
Rail Line reactivated "is tomove the garbage from the Fresh Kills Landfill."

Paula Young, a New York City Sani-tation Department spokeswoman, said the
department has no plans to usethe rail line to export waste, but may con-sider
that option in the future.

Bollwage, who is gearing up to fight an onslaught of New York City garbage
trucks that are expected in the nextfew weeks to begin transporting Staten
Island's trash to transfer stations in Elizabeth, said trains may be abetter
solution. The trains would not go through any residential neighborhoods in
Elizabeth, and they would keep New York garbage trucks off Elizabeth's streets,
he said.

Kaye said improvement of commerce -- not garbage disposal -- was the reason New
York's economic
development agency purchased the rail line's right-of-way in 1994, before the
announcement that Fresh Kills would close. But the rails could provide an
efficient way to move garbage, he said.

"Solid waste is interstate commerce," he said. "That commerce is moving through
right now, but it's moving by truck.

"Garbage is moving now," Kaye said. "To the extent we can build up our rail
freight network so that it moves in sealed containers, it's probably better and
safer to move it by rail than by truck."


October 29, 1999

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