(The following story by Lori Rodriguez was published in the January 5 online edition of the Houston Chronicle.)
HOUSTON — Since Houston’s Hispanic community sank roots more than a century ago along the railroad tracks that crisscross the East End, the neighborhood has flourished and withered and now has begun to bloom again.
A sturdy H.E.B. Pantry anchors a block in the early master-planned community of Eastwood. An old post office reborn as the chic Marbella’s banquet hall is perpetually packed with quineaeras, weddings and holiday galas. The franchise stores in Magnolia Park’s sleek Harrisburg Plaza routinely outsell their Houston counterparts.
But the gritty tracks that once lured immigrant workers with the promise of plentiful jobs are as much a curse for the neighborhood as a blessing. The trains that fueled the East End’s robust growth impede the flow of traffic, awaken residents at all hours and strand schoolchildren whose paths are often blocked by standing locomotives.
Today, concern over rail traffic in the East End is driving opposition to a plan that would move more trains and more hazardous material through the area each day. The $80 million proposal, which has received tentative federal approval, is designed to increase railroad competition and lower shipping rates for the chemical plants in the Bayport Industrial District near Clear Lake.
Caught in the middle of this clash of industrial giants is the long-suffering but increasingly middle-class neighborhood, where residents say mere survival has been supplanted by quality-of-life goals: clean air, good schools, a safe and nice neighborhood.
“My concern is for the people who either don’t have a voice or take it for granted that they’re just the bottom of the food chain and no one cares what they think,” says Bill England, president of the Eastwood Historical Commission. “If these companies don’t have as much money as they think they should have, that’s just too bad. Neither do we.”
In the proposal, Burlington Northern Santa Fe and four chemical companies have asked the federal government to approve construction of a new track. The so-called San Jacinto Rail Line would connect the Bayport plants to existing track that BNSF uses, breaking a monopoly on rail service out of the petrochemical complex and giving the consortium members a cheaper alternative for transporting their products.
The plants say they are being gouged by Union Pacific, which acquired a lucrative monopoly in Bayport after merging with Southern Pacific during the 1996 deregulation of the industry.
The San Jacinto line would connect to existing track on Texas 3 along a route north of Clear Lake near Ellington Field. It would shift chemical shipments now moved on UP tracks along Texas 146 and 225 through the new line and onto burdened East End tracks that wend past Milby and Chavez high schools and a slew of elementaries.
A coalition led by U.S. Rep. Gene Green and state Rep. Rick Noriega, Democrats who both represent the sprawling East End, adamantly opposes the new line. The Houston City Council earlier this year passed a strongly worded resolution condemning the plan; so have South Houston city officials, whose community would be bisected by the lead proposed route.
But the Surface Transportation Board has conditionally approved construction of the 13-mile rail line, pending public hearings later this month on a draft environmental impact statement, and a comment period that ends Feb. 21. The draft, released earlier this month, concluded the line would have “negligible” impact on the surrounding environment.
Green promptly accused the federal board of “rubber-stamping” whatever the railroads want at the expense of the community. The San Jacinto partners just as promptly lauded the statement’s “thoroughness.”
“BNSF is basically following the rules that the government laid out,” says Lyondell Chemical Co.’s David A. Harpole, a spokesman for the partnership that includes Equistar Chemicals LP, Basell USA Inc. and ATOFINA Petrochemicals Inc.
“We’re being criticized because we’re following the rules.”
The San Jacinto partners’ aggrieved sentiments are hard for their opponents to stomach. Union Pacific, based in Omaha, Neb., is the nation’s largest railroad with $10.6 billion in revenue last year. Fort Worth-based BNSF is a close second, with $9.2 billion in revenue during the same period.
Since the deregulation, Union Pacific and BNSF have fought for dominance, here and across the country.
In San Antonio, where Toyota is considering building a new $750 million plant, Union Pacific is steadfastly refusing to share its tracks with BNSF or any other railroad. In Seadrift, near Corpus Christi, BNSF is building a line that will service a major Dow Chemical plant now captive to Union Pacific. In North and South Dakota, BNSF enjoys the monopoly.
For the companies, Houston’s Bayport Loop and its $500 million worth of annual business is just another battleground.
“When the elephants fight, the ants get stepped on,” says Green, who is leading a rail task force that secured a 45-day extension of the public comment period.
“I don’t want to be anti-business. I have a lot of people who work for the railroad. But I have a lot more who live alongside the track.
“I want the railroads to compete, I just don’t want them to do it with more trains in the East End.”
Nancy Beiter, an attorney with the Transportation Board, says the draft statement speaks for itself and everyone still has ample time to weigh in.
“We certainly hope that, if people have concerns, they file them,” she says. “That’s why it’s a draft.”
With the federal process near the finish line, public spinning is full-tilt.
A cadre of San Jacinto line lobbyists have swarmed the Houston City Council, trying to warm currently cold hearts.
Former Metropolitan Transit Authority chairman Robert Miller with the Locke, Liddell and Sapp law firm, and longtime Greater Houston Partnership leader George Beatty have been brought aboard to press San Jacinto’s case; so have two Hispanic consultants.
On Dec. 17, the lobbyists packed a city transportation committee; a BNSF official addressed the council members.
But residents of the affected communities, from the modest East End to comfortable Clear Lake City, still are skeptical.
“I don’t want to play the race card on this issue. I don’t want to yell about environmental racism,” says Noriega. “But the case can be made that we have an overabundance of train traffic as it is. We’ve already got more than our fair share, and this is just piling it on.
“No one is opposed to competition. But for us, the long-term quality-of-life issues are forever.”
Faced with mounting opposition, San Jacinto partners shifted their proposed route away from their already crowded new South Yard off Mykawa so that it passes through less of eastside Houston. More significantly, they moved their new line farther from Clear Lake and east of Ellington Field past a city water treatment facility.
At-large Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, who lives in Clear Lake, is far from appeased.
“They’re trying to placate the people who can squawk the loudest, but I represent the whole city,” she says. “The truth is, citizens in some areas of Clear Lake may not see the train. But if it turns over or derails or explodes near the water treatment plant, the supply for 750,000 people in southeast Harris County will be endangered.
“Clear Lake people may think this won’t affect their property values, but it can affect their quality of life.”
Each day, at least 150 loaded cars go out of Bayport and 150 empty cars come in on a Union Pacific track that hugs the Ship Channel along Texas 225 through Pasadena and Deer Park. About half of the traffic continues through an industrial area that skirts the East End; the other half is pushed right through the neighborhood.
If the San Jacinto line is approved, about 40 percent of the total initially would be shifted to the new BNSF line; these cars would all be moved through the East End.
The San Jacinto partners say that is only two trains, each pulling up to 66 cars, one set loaded and the other empty, going back and forth through the East End each day. Much of the cargo will be nonhazardous plastic pellets, but BNSF estimates 1,500 to 7,000 carloads of hazardous material, including the petrochemicals ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, would be transported over the line annually.
The partners would aggressively court other Bayport plants now serviced by Union Pacific.
“They say two trains a day, but that’s just to start,” says Sekula-Gibbs. “If this gets approved, they can run trains 24 hours a day if they want.”
When it paid $6 billion for the financially troubled Southern Pacific, Union Pacific operated the northern route that serviced Bayport, and Southern Pacific operated the western. Because the merger gave Union Pacific a monopoly over what is considered the crown jewel of area cargo, competing railroads were given the right to build out to its line. BNSF also got extensive trackage rights to UP lines.
San Jacinto partners say they now pay roughly twice as much to ship from Bayport where there is no competitive rail service than from facilities where competition exists.
“We can no longer afford to do business like that,” says Lyondell’s Harpole.
BNSF was actively urged by the Houston Partnership and other prominent leaders to increase its local competitive service. San Jacinto officials were taken aback by the intense community opposition.
Harpole admits the community would benefit from improvements to existing tracks and their rights of way, and says BNSF is willing to do its part.
“No progress was being made on any of the infrastructure issues that exist in this area until the threat of competition was interjected into the region,” he says. “If you want nothing to change in the East End, you keep competition out. If you want to change the equation, you have to add a new player.”
Stung by the criticism, Burlington Northern in March publicly announced it would drop its controversial proposal if Union Pacific agreed to share its existing tracks now serving Bayport. In return, Burlington said it would make improvements and lay additional parallel tracks along an existing line that runs from Alvin to Houston.
Union Pacific’s Houston spokesman, Joe Adams, says the offer didn’t come close to replacing the “income stream.”
Union Pacific has been a local presence since it merged with Missouri Pacific in 1982; Missouri Pacific had previously merged with Missouri Kansas, which had been running trains here since the mid-1880s. There’s a reason a locomotive adorns Houston’s city seal.
Today, Adams estimates, Union Pacific runs about 60 percent of the trains in the greater Houston region; the market accounts for 10 percent of the railroad’s annual income. Adams says UP’s merger with SP was a reaction to Burlington Northern’s merger with Santa Fe four years earlier.
“We paid $3 billion to buy SP stock and assumed $3 billion in debt. We made a $6 billion investment in SP to stay competitive with Burlington Northern,” he says. “We took that risk, but we did not contemplate that we would be required to give them trackage rights.”
Union Pacific is prohibited from opposing the San Jacinto line by the merger agreement. But Adams can straighten what he considers the skewed public record.
“To survive as a railroad you need to take advantage of differential pricing because your costs are so high,” he says. “There are places where BNSF is the only railroad, and their rates are higher, and shippers there are concerned. Railroads differentially price according to the markets. Just like the gas station in the country is higher than in a city where there are three on a corner.”
“That’s fine. That’s fair,” says Adams. “But it’s unfair to try to force trackage rights on us by putting political pressure on us.”
Adams says Union Pacific has poured $140 million into increasing its Houston capacity since the merger, adding connecting lines and rehabilitating old ones. It has spent $1.4 billion during the past five years in capital investments across the Texas Gulf region.
“The reason there are a lot of train delays and blockages in the East End is because BNSF has the new South Yard there that they bring trains into,” says Adams, of the facility off Mykawa.
“It’s overcrowded. We have to try to get past to go into Freeport and Corpus Christi. This leads to congestion. We have to stay outside the yard waiting.”
Adams also disputes San Jacinto’s “two trains a day” claim, saying UP runs as many 600 cars a day in and out of Bayport during peak periods.
Plus, he says, “We would continue operating many of the trains that we now operate. Our trains might be shorter, but we wouldn’t cancel all of them because we have other Bayport customers and also service other plants along the Ship Channel.”
Like the San Jacinto partners and their array of lobbyists, Adams could lob the ball back into his competitor’s court endlessly. East End congressman Green is exasperated with both.
“There’s enough blame to go around for both Burlington and Union Pacific,” he says.
“It’s a business deal. That’s great business. Spend $80 million and get a big share of $500 million worth of business.”
“But even if we lose at the Surface Transportation Board, we’ll take this to the courthouse and, when Congress reconvenes, I will be looking for anything I can do to have some impact.”
He’s not alone. The proposed new line has spurred usually resigned neighborhood leaders to brisk activism.
At Noriega’s urging, officials of the East End Management District asked Union Pacific to fund a massive cleanup of dozens of trashed out railroad rights of way. The district wanted to oversee the three-year, $796,000 operation. UP denied the request, saying it would do the job better and cheaper.
District officials also are pressing BNSF to build a new underpass at a major East End intersection; the prime candidate would be Harrisburg. Green, who has been a key force in a long push for a grade-separated bridge over nine tracks on Central Avenue, wants BNSF to agree to three overpasses.
“At a cost of about $20 million per grade separation, building three overpasses would be cheaper for BNSF than cutting a deal with UP,” says Green.
Julio del Carpio, a Bolivian-born architect who designed the ultra-cool Marbella’s as well as the Laredo Bank on Harrisburg, recently opened the first portion of the Tlaquepaque Marketplace at Telephone and Lockwood. Named after Mexico’s best-known market and the cradle of its mariachi culture, the ambitious project could ultimately boast dozens of shops and restaurants.
“About 90 percent of the East End population is Hispanic, and we’re trying to add a little more flavor to this very colorful neighborhood,” says del Carpio.
“My original idea was to bring people in from downtown because Harrisburg and Texas are the same street. We’ve been trying to promote the neighborhood as the new ‘in’ place. But one of the major problems that I see is the trains. This proposal will almost double the number of train cars coming this way. The problem is not just that they cross, but that they stop and you have to sit there waiting for an hour and a half.”
As del Carpio talks alongside the tracks that cross Harrisburg at 65th, his words are drowned by three trains roaring by from a route that curves behind the elaborate banquet hall and alongside on 65th.
“This is a problem between the two railroads,” says del Carpio, echoing the widespread frustration. “All they have to do is just agree to something instead of trying to build more tracks and adding more train traffic because we really don’t need that.
“This is just not fair to us.”
Across the county, in the more prosperous but empathetic community of Clear Lake, Katie Chimenti, a leader in a coalition opposing the new line, is just as firm.
“Once you change those land-use patterns, you’ll never change them back,” Chimenti says of the new rail corridor, which she believes will draw other industrial development.