(The following story by Mark Muckenfuss appeared on the Press-Enterprise website on August 23, 2010.)
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Oscars, Emmys, Tonys — awards are usually a good thing.
Winners get to flaunt them, prop them up in a trophy case, put them on the mantel.
Who wouldn’t want to be recognized?
Maybe just about anyone presented with the Polluter of the Year award.
The folks at BNSF didn’t even want to touch it when members of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice tried to enter the company’s offices on Carnegie Drive in San Bernardino recently to present a framed certificate bearing the dubious honor.
Company officials handled the situation with decorum, aplomb and diplomacy.
They locked the doors.
It was the latest volley in a battle that has been going on for years between the railroad company and the community activist group.
Susana Negrete works for the center and lives near the BNSF rail yards near downtown San Bernardino. She blames respiratory problems and cancer cases among her family and neighbors on emissions from the yards. Her group recently began a billboard campaign to alert residents to the issue.
Negrete, who was among those trying to present the award to BNSF, said once the doors were locked on them, they attempted to show the award to employees inside the front windows.
“They wouldn’t even look at us.”
It’s probably a good thing that the group didn’t try to give BNSF the actual trophy that goes with the certificate (it’s a perpetual trophy that remains with the organization). Finding a place for the gold painted four-foot-high industrial drum might be a little tricky.
The BNSF rail yard, long known as the Santa Fe rail yard, was one of the city’s main industrial engines. A prime part of that was the workshops at the yards. Trains and railroad equipment were built and repaired there from the time the shops were established in the late 1880s until they shut down in 1992. During the peak decades of the 1940s and 1950s, the shops employed 4,000 trade workers.
All that activity produced a lot of exhaust and emissions and that hasn’t changed much.
A study in 2008 determined that the neighborhoods bordering the BNSF Railway yards had the highest known cancer risk to residents of any rail facility in the state. The cancer risk for those living adjacent to the BNSF rail yards was estimated to be 17 times higher than for those living near the Union Pacific yards in Colton.
BNSF said it has been making efforts to change that.
“We have taken a number of steps to reduce emissions,” said spokeswoman Lena Kent.
Kent said since the study came out, BNSF has reduced its emissions at the yard by 50 percent and plans to reduce emissions by 80 percent over the next 10 years. Over the next month, she said, the company will replace its switch engines with low-emission GenSet switch engines that can reduce nitrogen oxide emissions up to 80 percent and particulate matter up to 90 percent. Other low-emission vehicles also have been put in service at the yard and the company is using cleaner fuels, Kent said.
Negrete and her group disputes the BNSF claim of a 50 percent reduction so far.
Jim Morris, chief of staff to San Bernardino Mayor Pat Morris, said the city is working with BNSF and that progress in cutting emissions is being made. He cited such reductions as a critical factor in improving the city’s quality of life.
Negrete said her group won’t be stymied after being shut out of BNSF’s offices.
“We’re going to mail them the certificate,” she said.
Asked whether BNSF would be looking for a prominent place on its walls for the award, Kent laughed.
“I don’t think so,” she said.