(The following story by Roger Alvarado appeared on the Manville News website on April 22.)
MANVILLE, N.J. — One local resident says he wants a trainload of garbage that’s been raising a stink in town gone.
The trash train sometimes stationed in the stockyard between the south side of town on East Camplain Road toward the end of Lost Valley is so close to area houses that just its odor sickens neighbors, including Lee Place resident Chris Gosk.
“It smells as if a dog or someone defecated in front of the bridge,” Mr. Gosk said. “If it were just an occasional thing where you’d catch a whiff of something moderate that would be one thing, but you can smell it coming over the bridge blocks away. It’s horrible.”
CSX Spokesman John Casellini said late Wednesday that he and other company officials are in the process of looking into the situation and hope to have it resolved shortly.
“Any problems that are brought to us by the community we will look into,” Mr. Casellini said.
Mr. Casellini went on to say that CSX will look into the possibility of minimizing the time that the train is in the stockyard.
According to Mr. Gosk, the problem is greatest during weekends, but that the smell persists throughout the week.
“The way they do it is they stage the trains on a Friday evening so that they’re there for delivery on a Monday morning and it just reeks when the wind blows,” Mr. Gosk said. “Some of the material is brought in from Philadelphia and other states and they’re not on any kind of set schedule. The train just shows up out of the blue on your doorstep for a few hours.”
Mr. Gosk says his protests have thus far fallen on deaf ears.
“I’ve filed complaints with the EPA and called CSX to try to get them to do something, but it’s like trying to get through to the Pentagon,” Mr. Gosk said. “They just push you off and give you the runaround, it’s unbelievable—you feel so helpless.
When Mr. Gosk has managed to speak with someone from CSX, he says, he hasn’t liked what he’s heard. “I’ve been told that the containers are sealed therefore there should not be a smell,” he said. “That’s their reasoning, but they’re not the ones standing outside two blocks away.”
Mr. Gosk says CSX workers from the transfer station have told him that at various times local and state health officials have been out to the site, but still nothing has been done.
“From what I understand they have to be caught in the act,” he said. “It’s one of those type deals where money talks and it’s about who has it and money and politics.”
Former Councilman Martin Wierzba took Mr. Gosk’s concerns to the Borough Council on April 12, asking council members to do something about it.
“Can we possibly speak with the county, state or whoever we need to talk to about moving the stockyard?” Mr. Wierzba said.
Mayor Angelo Corradino says that both he and Borough Administrator Gary Garwacke have been in the process of seeing what can be done to alleviate the problem.
“I spoke to two executives this morning,” Mayor Corradino said Monday.
In addition to the smell emanating from the trash train, the mayor says that refrigerator cars are left running all night, keeping many nearby residents awake.
“It’s an uncomfortable position,” the mayor said.
Mr. Casellini says it could be difficult to do anything about this particular issue.
“If the refrigerated units are shut down then whatever is in them would spoil,” he said.
The mayor also says that sometimes trains are left running at night, which causes a major hindrance to local residents.
“Those diesel engines staged next to our homes hiss and tick and run all night,” Mr. Gosk added.
According to Mr. Casellini, warmer weather could begin to alleviate the problem.
“The locomotives don’t have antifreeze,” he said. “Usually we deal with a threshold of 45 degrees. When temperatures are below that we keep them running otherwise by turning them on off it could ruin them. But the warmer weather makes that less of a concern and we have more of an ability to shut them down.”
Mr. Gosk says that the noise is something he could put up with, but he says there’s no way he’ll continue putting up with the smell.
“I could tolerate that (the noise),” he said. “I was born on the tracks, so that doesn’t bother me. Sure it’s annoying, but you can muffle the sound, but that smell is sometimes so pungent and putrid.”
Mr. Gosk says the issue pops up around this time each year because of the warmer weather.
“When the heat hits it, the problem is magnified,” Mr. Gosk said.
According to Mr. Gosk, the problem began a couple years ago.
“It started to magnify in its intensity and I took some steps and called some councilman and that seemed to diminish it to some extent,” he said.
Unfortunately, the problem has returned.
“From what I understand the transfer station was in disarray around that time so there was not a lot of service to it or much trash taken over,” Mr. Gosk said.
He says it appears likely that that situation has been remedied as the yard has been busy of late.
Mayor Corradino says his solution would be to move the trains all the way down two miles north of Manville in what he characterizes as a “dead area” of Hillsborough.
“There they wouldn’t be affecting anybody,” he said. “That would be the simple solution.”
Mr. Gosk, who says his wife is expecting a baby in less than a month, says he just wants something to be done.
“I did not sign off on this when I purchased my home,” he said.
Mayor Corradino says something will be done.
“We need to make sure that people can be in their backyards comfortably,” he said. “We are trying to make them (Conrail and CSX) understand the problem.”
“We recognize the concerns of the community and we will try to find out what the issues there are and do what we can to rectify them,” Mr. Casellini said.