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Residents make stink over trash

Residents make stink over trash
By Jeremy Walsh

Middle Village and Glendale residents are reeling from the reek of rusting rail cars loaded with refuse from Long Island.

The stench of the garbage has raised an outcry at Christ the King High School, prompting state Sen. Serphin Maltese (R-Glendale) to write a letter to the New York & Atlantic Railway asking for a remedy.

“It has been previously brought to your attention that the noxious odors with their attendant bacterial base … are the subject of continual complaints by our students and staff,” Maltese wrote Sept. 24. He is chairman of Christ the King's board of trustees.

The freight cars are loaded on Long Island and hauled by the railroad to an interchange with the larger railroad CSX, which takes the garbage to sites in Ohio, West Virginia and Alabama. The stench spreads when cars wait on a stretch of track near the Metropolitan Avenue Long Island Rail Road station for a CSX locomotive to pick them up.

Bob Holden, the Juniper Park Civic Association president, said he first noticed the smell July 31. It returned Sept. 23, he said.

“I've never, ever smelled it so bad,” he said. “You were choking, it was so bad. You could actually smell methane. I live about two blocks away from the railroad. I had to close all the windows.”

Maltese said CSX left the rail cars there for nearly 24 hours before picking them up.

Holden said the railroad demonstrated to civic leaders how it would haul the garbage 10 years ago.

“Initially, we were pretty receptive to it, thinking that this was going to be in sealed containers and it would be no odor,” he said. “That couldn't be further from the truth. This was horrendous.”

Paul Victor, the New York & Atlantic Railway president, said the railroad has no control over the condition of the garbage containers, which the federal government mandates should be closed on top, but not airtight.

The containers are loaded onto freight cars at a licensed transfer station and off-loaded at another station, he said, noting the railroad is not allowed to handle the containers.

“The movement of municipal waste … all the regulations are incumbent on the loader,” he said. “The containers they move in are not railroad-owned containers. They're owned or leased to the permanent facility.”

Victor said he was meeting with CSX to try to set up a timetable with less waiting in Middle Village, but noted it was not an easy task.

“We have to blend in with the entire commuter network,” he said, referring to trains on the LIRR and Metro-North Railroad lines. “Neither one of us are masters of our fate.”

In the meantime, the Juniper Park civic is circulating a petition complaining about switching noise and the smell.

Still, Holden said, he did not object to the concept of transporting garbage by rail, noting it takes trucks off the clogged streets of Maspeth and Middle Village.

“We're all for freight, and we'd like to see an expansion of freight,” he said. “We'd like to see a second track like there used to be.”

Reach reporter Jeremy Walsh by e-mail at jwalsh@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.