Rail Plans Rattle Neighbors

From: http://www.denverpost.com/ci_5520665 Rail Plans Rattle Neighbors A huge Union Pacific hub north of Brighton doesn’t sit well with rural residents By Jeffrey Leib Denver Post Staff WriterArticle Last Updated: 03/26/2007 06:06:07 AM MDT “We don’t need that here. We can’t live with the noise.” Lucky Zolman, above, who lives adjacent to land where Union Pacific is considering building a large rail yard. (The Denver Post) Along Weld County Road 4 1/4 – Lucky Zolman sputters in frustration when he thinks about Union Pacific Railroad putting a 640-acre switching yard and freight hub a few hundred yards from his home. “We don’t need that here. We can’t live with the noise,” said Zolman, 62, who moved to the quiet dead-end lane 31 years ago. Union Pacific is studying the costs and impacts of relocating its intermodal freight operation, where containers are loaded onto trains from trucks, and its switching yard, where rail cars are switched among trains, from central Denver to a 2 3/4-mile-long and a third-of-a-mile-wide swath of land between Brighton and Fort Lupton. The freight operation is currently located near East 40th Avenue and York Street, and the switching yard is on 36th Street. The Regional Transportation District needs the railroad’s facilities in Denver for its FasTracks commuter- rail lines, including the train to Denver International Airport. RTD has agreed to pay the railroad $10 million for the relocation study and another $30 million to acquire land for the new rail yard. It’s possible RTD also could pay the $100 million or more that Union Pacific is expected to need to build the new freight hub and switching yard. “Our philosophy going into public-private partnerships is that we pay for things that benefit the railroad, and public entities pay for things that benefit communities,” said UP spokeswoman Kathryn Blackwell. Complex’s impact studied If RTD did not need the two Denver rail yards for FasTracks, Union Pacific would not be moving, she added. Vicki Kramer Bilak, whose family has owned land along County Road 4 1/4 for 103 years, said if Union Pacific’s huge complex is constructed just down the lane from her house, the diesel fumes, noise and truck traffic will be intolerable. “It’s too close. There is no way you can liveTed Crim walks near a sign neighbors made to show their displeasure with the plan to build a large rail yard north of Brighton. He lives on the southern end of the proposed project. (Post / Karl Gehring)next to something like that,” she said. UP’s study is looking at possible impacts the rail yard would have on noise, air quality and traffic. Preliminary results will be completed by September. They should indicate whether the project is financially feasible and whether impacts can be mitigated, Blackwell said. Union Pacific opened a new $100 million, 360-acre intermodal freight yard near Dallas about 1 1/2 years ago that is a model for what the railroad would like to operate here, she said. The proposed UP operation in Weld County would be nearly twice as large as the one near Dallas because it would include a major switching yard as well. Intermodal refers to the transfer of freight containersbetween trains and trucks. Rail cars are moved from one train to another at a switching yard. The Texas facility can handle 365,000 over-the-road trailers and containers a year, Union Pacific said. As many as 700 trucks go in and out daily. Fort Lupton is eager for the economic gains the UP rail yard might bring to the small community, said City Administrator Jim Sidebottom. The yard would be “a new state-of-the-art, high-tech” operation, “not dirty and noisy like the old ones,” he said. The city expects that trucking companies, warehouses and manufacturers would locate nearby to serve the rail yard. Ft. Lupton to annex land Still, Fort Lupton also is waiting todetermine the environmental impacts. “We want to know where the traffic is going to go,” Sidebottom said. “I don’t want this going through town.” For the project to proceed, land that Union Pacific needs for the rail yard would be annexed into Fort Lupton, and the city would provide water and other utilities, Sidebottom said. Michael Olds and his wife, Diana, live north and west of where the UP yard would be and have a 3 1/2-acre horse-boarding and -training operation. They live now with the main UP north-south line that brings at least 15 trains a day by their horse pens, but Michael Olds said “industrial activity will compound exponentially” if the rail yard is built. “Why would they want all of this so close to a population center?” he asked. Don Truax, another resident on County Road 4 1/4, lives several houses closer to the proposed rail yard than Bilak and Zolman, and UP has offered to buy his land for the project. “They just came in without asking and said, ‘We want your property,”’ said Truax, who thinks the railroad low-balled him with its offer. “I said, ‘What if I don’t want to sell?”’ Truax said, adding that UP’s agent claimed the railroad has been around since the 1800s and can “condemn” the land of someone who holds out. The railroad does have the power of eminent domain but uses it very sparingly, Blackwell said. “It is absolutely the last thing we ever want to think about,” she said. Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com