Chicago CSX Intermodal Site Devastates Lives

Is this the fate of SE WinterHaven? COPYRIGHT 2006 Chicago Tribune Byline: Antonio Olivo Apr. 10--At night, while most of Chicago sleeps, families near the CSX Intermodal rail yard in West Englewood lie awake, their homes shuddering from something that sounds like trucks falling from the sky. In daylight, they watch cracks spreading across ceilings or walls and wipe clean the black diesel dust that settles on floors and dishes--byproducts of a 24-hour operation that handles as many as 700 truckloads per day. When CSX opened the rail yard in 1998--an economic boon to the struggling South Side neighborhood--everybody knew there would be noise and traffic. The city, initially wary of the yard, negotiated an agreement with the freight hauler to pay $300,000 a year into a neighborhood investment fund as a way to turn a potential nuisance into a plus for the blighted area. But neighbors say the fallout from rail yard activities is worse than they imagined. And the money, nearly half of it set aside for homes with bad roofs, porches or windows, seems to have gone everywhere but to those in the worst spots. Portions of the $2.8 million paid by CSX so far have gone to a picture-frame shop, a suburban roofing contractor, a street-cleaning program employing ex-convicts and a project to build a neighborhood strip mall, documents show. But plans for a sound barrier have fizzled. Chicago was built around one of the nation's great railroad hubs, and from its early years, there have been conflicts between residential life and the demands of the industry. A century and a half later, the South and Southwest Sides remain crucial junctions in the nation's freight system, now dependent on steel containers weighing up to 40 tons each that can be switched from trucks to railcars to ships. CSX does not dispute Englewood residents' complaints that the West Englewood yard has caused sleep deprivation, illness due to diesel pollution and property damage. In response to a class-action lawsuit last year, in which some nearby homeowners sought to limit the yard's operations to daytime and early-evening hours, the company did not take issue with those allegations. CSX lawyers instead noted that the company is immune to such court action under a 1995 federal law that leaves regulation of rail operations to the Surface Transportation Board. That federal agency said it hasn't received any complaints about the yard. A federal judge dismissed the suit, noting CSX's contention that cutting operations would cost $500,000 a day in lost revenues. "We're working with the alderman and the faith-based organizations to try and be good neighbors," CSX spokeswoman Kim Freely said. Critics complain, however, that any benefits from the rail yard have been arbitrary. Of the 35 or so households that have benefited from CSX's West Englewood fund, mainly through a hand-drawn lottery held in 2003, most are at least half a mile from the yard, where its concert of slamming containers, horns and revving diesel engines can scarcely be heard. "Those people don't even know there is a train yard over here," said Quincy Johnson, who blames a crumbling porch and ceiling cracks in his Hamilton Avenue home on a towering overhead crane nearby that stacks room-size metal containers onto metal train beds. City officials say it is not their problem. "If there are complaints about damage and people believe it is a result of CSX, they need to deal with CSX directly," said Connie Buscemi, spokeswoman for the city's Planning and Development Department. Before the rail yard opened, city officials had sought to open an industrial park in 10 vacant acres owned by the former Conrail company. Upon learning that CSX had acquired that land and intended to use it, the city persuaded the freight company to contribute the equivalent of the tax revenues projected for the industrial park. Officials targeted a 2-square-mile area surrounding the site as the stage for local improvements delivered by the CSX fund. The money has fostered community development in a blue-collar neighborhood long starving for local investment, Buscemi said, adding that the city has not received any proposals specifically seeking to repair homes closest to the yard. Besides agreeing to pay the city at least $300,000 a year until 2018 for its operations in West Englewood, the Florida-based company has sponsored local parades and turkey drives and contributed $2,000 toward a new neighborhood community center, Freely said. The intensity of need in the neighborhood showed when the city sponsored a 2003 lottery to determine whose homes would be fixed with $300,000 set aside for emergency repairs. In an elementary school auditorium, members of a standing-room-only crowd strained to hear whether their names had been pulled from a box up on stage. Several who won had never seen the rail yard, those who attended recalled. "The people closest to the yard got a raw deal on that one," said John Paul Jones, chairman of the non-profit Greater Englewood Community and Family Task Force. Carolyn Brown won new windows, doors and some tuck-pointing on her Throop Street graystone, which sits a mile from the yard. "I didn't have the money to do any of that," Brown said of the $10,000 job. "I was lucky." Some small-business owners also have benefited. Herbert Goode, president of Silver Cloud Galleries, a picture-frame manufacturer in West Englewood, applied for aid and used the $25,000 he received to pay for glass-block windows and other renovations to the brick industrial building his company bought in 2000. "I was going to do the repairs anyway," Goode said. "I didn't get as much as I expected. Still, I was reimbursed for something, which is better than a kick in the head." James Capraro, a veteran community activist who helped city officials negotiate the terms of the fund, said local community leaders did not anticipate the rail yard's impacts. His group, the Greater Southwest Development Corp., has used $250,000 from the fund toward efforts to rehab four abandoned houses in nearby Chicago Lawn, he said. Another group, Neighborhood Housing Services, has used about $400,000 from the fund to help homeowners--none closest to the rail yard--with facade improvements. "The fund wasn't created to correct the ills of the railroad because the railroad wasn't supposed to create any ills," Capraro said. The fortunes of those helped by the fund have heightened resentment near the CSX yard, where the noise continues. "My granddaughter [is] scared, waking up screaming sometimes," said Annetta Allen, gesturing toward Janai, 6. The pigtailed girl watched hip-hop videos in their Hamilton Avenue living room, where a web of cracks zigzagged from a wall onto the ceiling. Outside, a recently paved sidewalk also had cracks. Local concerns fall most heavily at Goodlow Magnet School, which sits a block from the yard on 62nd Street, near a CSX retention pond that neighbors say is a mosquito problem. Goodlow Principal Patricia Lewis said teachers complain about groggy pupils sleeping at their desks. A concentration of asthma cases at the school also has officials wondering whether it's related to diesel fumes and dust wafting from the rail yard, though there is no evidence to support that, she said. Ald. Theodore Thomas (15th), whose ward wraps around the rail yard, agreed that residents are suffering. But he said his hands are tied by the agreement that spreads the neighborhood fund over 2 square miles. "I don't like the service area of CSX," Thomas said. "I think we're stuck with it." Ollie Mae Ervin has for years kept her grandchildren's old socks as proof of her misery. Wrapped inside plastic freezer bags, the lace-fringed toddler socks were covered with the black diesel dust Ervin says she mops from her linoleum floors most mornings. Splayed across a table like crime scene evidence, the packages carried handwritten labels that documented years of frustration: "2002, 2003, 2004, 2005." "I just mop so much all the time," Ervin said, while a diesel engine rumbled outside. "Some days, there's so much dust you feel you can hardly breathe." aolivo@tribune.com Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com. TICKER SYMBOL(S): NYSE:CSX COPYRIGHT 2006 Chicago Tribun