(The following story by Eric Smith appeared on The Daily News website on August 3, 2010.)
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — What began as a tame public hearing Monday night turned contentious as concerned citizens pounced on a chief environmental issue surrounding Norfolk Southern Corp.’s proposed intermodal facility in Rossville.
Inside Collierville Town Hall, residents from Shelby and Fayette counties in Tennessee and Marshall County in Mississippi got another chance to question officials representing the railroad, the railroad’s environmental consultant, the railroad’s design consultant and the Tennessee Department of Transportation.
The hearing, one of the final steps in a long process, was the second forum to grow heated as it went on. That’s because attendees understood that once the environmental assessment (EA) Norfolk Southern has commissioned is approved by the federal government, the railroad can begin construction.
And citizens Monday night learned that the EA has been preliminarily approved with no “significant” impact on the environment. The assessment was conducted to National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) standards and administered by environmental consultant AMEC Earth & Environmental. Norfolk Southern contracted AMEC to perform the study.
More than 100 gathered at Town Hall for the two-hour hearing with 14 citizens speaking publicly. While three of them lent support, the other 11 levied challenging questions and critical comments about the facility, slated to open in the southwestern corner of Fayette County in 2012.
At the heart of the matter is the Norfolk, Va.-based railroad’s plan to transform 380 acres of rural land into the $112 million Memphis Regional Intermodal Terminal, a sprawling yard of pavement and rail track where cargo containers will be transferred between trucks and trains.
Without a doubt the biggest issue arose when area residents began asking about the facility’s potential impact on the Memphis Sands Aquifer, a recharge area for Memphis’ drinking water.
For as long as this project has been discussed – well before the site location became official in July 2009 – local residents have raised concerns about the yard’s proximity to the aquifer. If contaminants like diesel fuel soak into the aquifer’s recharge area, for example, it could be disastrous.
On Monday night they pelted panelists about problems related to the aquifer that could arise during construction or operation of the facility. When officials spoke about their plans to prevent an incident from happening, and also how they would mitigate the damage should the aquifer be breached, citizens countered by saying BP had mitigation plans in place before the Deepwater Horizon exploded and an underwater well began gushing oil into the ocean, but that did little good.
Bernie Voor with AMEC tried to assure the crowd that every effort would be made to protect the aquifer, and that if any part of the sands was “exposed” – a 50-50 chance, he added – it would be protected by either clay or concrete to prevent contaminants from leeching into it.
“Our difference is in understanding what the public is concerned about relative to what we’re saying,” Voor said. “We’re saying we’ll be proactive and we don’t expect to impact the aquifer.”
Along the same environmental line of questioning, citizens asked – pleaded – for the project to undergo a full “Environmental Impact Statement.”
As of now, the project only requires an EA. A full statement would take more time and require more in-depth environmental studies on the land in question. It likely would push back construction and could jeopardize the project’s federal funding. Once the federal government approves a finding of no significant impact (FONSI), the railroad can begin moving dirt.
In addition to concerns about the aquifer, the public on Monday asked about everything from the project’s vehicle traffic, expected to reach 2,000 trucks per day, to the likely possibility of urban sprawl in the area with the arrival of warehouses and other industrial uses.
They also doubted the project’s economic viability as well as its economic benefits, which railroad officials (with the aid of governmental and private studies) have estimated at $314.6 million annually by 2020.
And though Norfolk Southern did receive $105 million in federal stimulus money under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program, it has earmarked half of that money for an intermodal facility in Alabama. That leaves $52.5 million for the Rossville facility. And because Norfolk Southern has committed only $31 million of its own money for the facility, a $28.5 million shortfall remains.