(The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted the following article by Chip Jones to its website on June 12.)
RICHMOND, Va. — CSX Corp. is backing off an initiative that could have closed railroad crossings to dozens of homes and farms in Southwest Virginia, an executive of the railroad said yesterday.
“We’ve agreed to take a step back and not close any of the crossings,” said Robert W. Shinn, a vice president for CSX in Richmond.
CSX’s plan was part of a rail-maintenance effort to upgrade and modernize track and rail crossings along a 30-mile stretch in rural Scott County.
However, when landowners living along the railroad were contacted about property rights late last month, CSX created what the county attorney called widespread “turmoil and consternation.”
“We’ve got quite a number of folks who would be landlocked if these crossings were closed,” said Dean Foster, Scott County’s attorney.
No exact figures of landowners were available, though Foster put the number in the dozens.
But Shinn said he held constructive meetings Tuesday with a group of landowners.
“I heard the concerns of a lot of people,” Shinn said. “I think we’ve got a good plan set forth so that we don’t negatively impact the people who need the railroad crossings for access to their houses and farms.”
His visit was prompted by local outrage at signs posted at the crossings by CSX in late May. The notices told landowners they could lose road access unless they could prove they had a legal right to cross the railroad.
CSX also sent certified letters to landowners telling them they could have to pay $150 annual fees to use railroad crossings and find insurance coverage for liability at the crossing.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-9th, and CSXDel. Terry G. Kilgore, R-Scott, intervened. The county Board of Supervisors passed a resolution condemning CSX’s actions.
Some of the rail-crossing agreements are contained in deeds from the late 1800s, making them hard to research, Kilgore said.
An official in CSX’s property-management department in Jacksonville, Fla., sent sternly worded letters to the property owners. The letters said the company could “find no deed language” allowing them to cross the railroad, Foster said.
“It’s a process that was turned on its head,” the county attorney said. “They put the burden on these individual landowners to go out and research their deeds to 100 years ago.”
Boucher, in a letter to CSX Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael Ward, said “such requirements place an unconscionable financial burden on these property owners, in effect denying them access to their homes and property.”
Boucher, whose district includes Scott County, asked CSX to delay its restrictions.
CSX will continue to work with landowners to close old crossings, officials said, and it will start replacing ties and track this month.
But Shinn stressed, “We’re not going to close crossings that would landlock people’s farms.”
One landowner said the battle is not over yet.
“We still don’t have anything in writing,” said Karen Hartsock of the Dungannon community in the county.
Hartsock, a math and science teacher, said she has hired an attorney with 15 other landowners.