(The following article by Dan Geringer was posted on the Philadelphia Daily News website on September 2.)
PHILADELPHIA — Russell Meddin biked onto the new $14 million Schuylkill River Park Trail at 23rd and Race streets, headed south and was hit by a wave of stink so putrid that his first thought was: “Oh, my gosh, somebody died.”
“The first time I smelled it, I thought that a jogger had had a heart attack and died and nobody had noticed for days,” Meddin told the Daily News’ Stinkmeister, voice of the pee-and-poop-plagued public.
“It didn’t even occur to me that I was smelling a train filled with rotting garbage.”
When Meddin failed to spot a body, he turned away from the riverbank and was startled by a mile-long CSX trash train parked on the tracks along the trail as far as his eyes could see.
“It smelled like someone had run over a skunk,” he said. “A very large skunk.
“I had an epiphany. I realized that a train filled with stinking garbage was standing next to a public park, a children’s playground and one of the nicest residential neighborhoods in the city.”
For months now, residents, joggers, bikers and hikers have been singing the CSX Stinktrain blues, “I’ve Been Sniffing Too Much Railroad.”
All day Tuesday and all day yesterday, the Stinktrain simmered in the summer heat like a mile-long turd, making the walk along the river trail feel like a stroll through a large intestine.
The overpowering stench left the Stinkmeister shaken, not stirred, even after he donned his trademark gas mask.
During two years of exposing the city’s most feces-fouled hellholes, the Stinkmeister has NEVER encountered anything as go-for-the-gold nauseating as the CSX Stinktrain’s mile-long caravan of crud containers chock full of putrid garbage from New York.
From Stinkmeister’s vantage point at 25th and Locust, where the reeking railcars blocked public access to the river trail, the Stinktrain stretched from 23rd and Race in Center City to Ellsworth Street near Grays Ferry Avenue in South Philadelphia.
That’s some serious stink!
“We are aware of the concerns,” CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan told the Stinkmeister. “Three solid-waste trains a day stop in Philadelphia going from the Northeast to landfills in the South. Sometimes, they wait in Philadelphia for several hours until they get picked up by other trains going south.
“We try to keep as far from residences as possible,” Sullivan said. “We try very hard not to block the crossing at Locust and 25th. But sometimes it is necessary for a train to sit there for hours, due to the length of the train or because there’s another train on the track up ahead. We try to keep that to a minimum, bearing in mind the residents’ use of the crossing and the odors.”
“Baloney!” residents told the Stinkmeister, citing their real-time webcam focused on 25th and Locust, and accessible on their www.freetheriverpark.org Web site.
The webcam shows residents – some carrying bikes, some carrying children – climbing between Stinktrain railcars to access the park, playing Russian roulette with their lives because the trains could suddenly start moving at any moment.
“One day I’m going to hear about somebody I know getting killed or losing an arm or something,” said J.T. Straub, a resident with two small children. “The trains themselves are a pain in the ass, but the trash and the stink are a quality-of-life issue.”
After investigating citizen complaints, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection agreed.
“CSX Transportation has engaged in unlawful conduct by transporting solid waste in a manner to create a public nuisance and adversely affect the public health and safety,” the DEP found.
In July, it cited CSX Transportation for violating the Solid Waste Management Act by parking trains “carrying putrescent trash and garbage which is causing offensive odors in a residential city area” for more than four hours.
Try 24 hours and counting, said the Stinkmeister yesterday.
CSX spokesman Sullivan called to apologize and explain that this week’s lingering Stinktrain is marooned in Philadelphia by flooded tracks down the line in hurricane-ravaged Richmond, Va.
When asked why this and all Stinktrains can’t be marooned in the gigantic South Philly rail yards, far from residential neighborhoods where families have a right to breathe air that doesn’t smell like barf, Sullivan said rail yards slow down trains and waste trains have to move quickly.
Maybe the Stinkmeister’s head was still suffering from inhaling the Stinktrain’s puke-scented perfume, but what’s slower than parked for 24 hours, dude?