(The following story by Mary E. Arata appeared on the Nashoba Publishing website on May 15, 2009.)
AYER, Mass. — Last week, there was much talk about launching a tritown assault on an Ayer railroad construction project begun last month on land that sits atop drinking water aquifer protection zones for Ayer and Littleton.
The Ayer-Littleton Spectacle Pond Committee plan proposed uniting the Ayer, Littleton and Westford boards of selectmen to address Pan Am Railway’s planned automotive rail transfer station off Willow Road. Now, a sprig of an olive branch has been offered in the multiyear battle between the rail company and Ayer officials over drinking water protection efforts.
Billerica summit
To calm the escalating situation, two Ayer officials met with rail executives for both Pan Am and Norfolk Southern rail companies Tuesday afternoon at Pan Am’s North Billerica offices. Town Administrator Shaun Suhoski said Pan Am President David Fink was in attendance. The summit talks followed a faxed request by Pan Am to Ayer Town Hall last Friday.
Suhoski and Department of Public Works Superintendent Dan Nason reported significant progress towards tentatively creating a more open system of communications with Pan Am as work continues at the San-Vel site.
“The meeting was productive,” said Suhoski. “The key achievement was that Pan Am agreed and offered to allow our DPW technical staff to sit in on the weekly construction meetings onsite.” The exact schedule was not released, but Suhoski said the first such meeting was to occur by week’s end. “So instead of having mystery surround the project, we’ll have our technical staff peer-to-peer to review their schedule, scope of work and impacts.”
Nason and Water Department Director Rick Lynde will be the two Ayer officials regularly briefed on site. “This will give the (Ayer) Board of Selectmen regular, timely and accurate information as to what’s happening on the site,” said Suhoski. “That’s a very strong gesture of good faith from the railroad. (It will be a) good conduit for flow of information. The chief engineer for design and construction for Pan Am is our single point of contact.”
Pan Am and Norfolk Southern recently announced their joint venture along their so-called Patriot Corridor, linking Boston and Mechanicville, N.Y., via this Ayer station in their effort to dominate the auto distribution rail route.
Consent-decree compliance
Significant discussion did revolve around the 17-point 2003 consent decree mutually entered into between the town and Pan Am (then called Guilford) regarding minimum standards for the company to comply with whenever construction was to start.
Of key concern to the Water Department was gaining permission for the placement of monitoring wells on the San-Vel site at the outset of construction to establish a baseline for water quality. Suhoski said the rail companies asked Tuesday for the town to now submit its written proposal on appropriate locations for such testing.
It’s long been discussed that the purpose for several town test sites located outside the San-Vel borders is of no use other than to accurately detect water contamination. Officials have requested regular on-site monitoring to more quickly detect spills before they make their way towards the town’s test sites, and ultimately the town’s underground water sources. There are no other water sources in Ayer that appear to be available to provide the quality and quantity of water provided by the critical Grove Pond pumping station.
Regarding the installation of a “geo-membrane” under the section of track where locomotives will idle periodically, Suhoski says the consent decree never provided a time line for its installation, but it’s not off the radar. “They intend to fully install it,” added Suhoski, who said the company was to provide its full plan to the DPW on Wednesday of this week.
There was also some discussion about dewatering activity at the site, as reportedly the contractor’s earth-moving equipment has struck the shallow underground water table. Dewatering involves the extraction of heavier water content from excavated soils. Particulars on the dewatering process being used and where the pulled water is being released were not immediately provided.
The 800-car capacity Pan Am automobile truck-to-rail transfer facility — effectively a multiacre paved parking lot — will be located diagonally across the street from a larger, identically purposed but vacant rail yard owned by Pan Am on Willow Road. There will also be a guard shack and the repurposing of a small administrative building already on site. Concerns over the former San-Vel site include increased heavy truck traffic due to car carriers, and the risk of hazardous spills into sandy terrain. The work itself is largely to pave the lot with impermeable asphalt, preventing the absorption of rain to recharge the underground water source that supplies the eastern portion of Ayer.
Despite calls to stop the rail-yard work, Pan Am construction approvals have been lying dormant since 2003. Detractors admit that their ultimate concern in the face of construction is gaining assurances of the shared sense of responsibility to the water source and environment. However, the Spectacle Pond Committee is forging ahead to try to apply pressure to have Pan Am abandon the project since it owns a larger, empty site just a quarter mile to the west along the rail tracks.
According to Pan Am, the new yard is needed because the vacant yard is tied up in a long-term lease through 2017 by CSX Railways. Likely tenants for the new rail station will be Ford Motor Co., with UPS acting as a transportation agent for Ford.
The Ayer Board of Selectmen authorized a letter be sent to Ford Motor Co. President and CEO Alan Mulally and UPS Chairman and CEO D. Scott Davis. The letter asked them to protect Ayer’s drinking water sources through their operational plans for the new site.
Selectmen Jim Fay and Carolyn McCreary were going to go to meet with the rail officials, but in the end, Fay says the selectmen, “sent Shaun and Dan Nason for a smaller, less confrontational” fact-finding mission.
Suhoski will report more to the Ayer Board of Selectmen at its next meeting on May 19. He’ll ask the board to determine the best on-site water quality test-monitor locations to submit to Pan Am ‘as soon as possible.”