CSX struggling to take out the trash in the Northeast

Trains Magazine on-line article of 9/7/22: "Waste shippers complain about CSX service in the Northeast"

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... northeast/

Excerpts:

The National Waste & Recycling Association, a trade group representing 70% of the private sector’s waste and recycling market, told the Surface Transportation Board that its members prefer to reach commercial solutions with their rail carriers.

“However, the service issues that our member companies are raising indicate that the problem is a network problem affecting the entire northeast region of the country. For example, in Boston, NWRA members are unable to load rail cars due to ongoing service issues involving the delivery of rail cars. In the meantime, railcars loaded with waste are waiting to be moved out by the railroad. Another example, in Connecticut and New York, rail operations are being negatively impacted due to the excessive backlog of cars waiting to switch at CSX’s Selkirk Yard in Albany, N.Y.,” the group’s CEO, Darrell K. Smith, wrote in a Sept. 1 letter to the STB.

Crew shortages have been the root cause of the service issues experienced in certain regions of CSX’s network, including Selkirk where we have seen an unusual surge in vacation entitlements,” she adds. “The staffing shortages in Selkirk should ease now that we are past the Labor Day weekend; however, we took the proactive step of sending a number of temporary relocations to provide additional support which has helped the situation there. CSX has also modified how waste traffic is blocked in order to enhance service for those shippers at Selkirk.”

Here's the letter the President/CEO of the NWRA sent to the STB Chairman: https://www.stb.gov/wp-content/uploads/ ... 1-2022.pdf

well csx may have some problems moving the trash but i'll bet they're way ahead of the curve when it comes to invoicing their trash shippers.

Connecticut's trash shipping needs are only going to grow in the future. The closing date for the MIRA incinerator has been pushed out to next July, but is reportedly in such poor condition that it could fail at any time.

https://www.ctpublic.org/news/2022-04-2 ... cys-future

I find it ironic all these urban areas that are outgrowing their landfills or even outlawing their ability to manage their waste by closing incinerators, but it's somehow the railroads fault they can't move it out fast enough?...

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eolesen wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 6:54 pm I find it ironic all these urban areas that are outgrowing their landfills or even outlawing their ability to manage their waste by closing incinerators, but it's somehow the railroads fault they can't move it out fast enough?...

A sizable bulk of waste from Metro NY/NJ is moved out by rail. North Jersey's own landfills in the Meadowlands
closed to municipal waste by the 1990s(*), NYC shut down the last residential and municipal incinerators in 1994
and Fresh Kills landfill stopped accepting waste as well (though still active as a compost site and rail transfer
station on premises). Manhattan has sent most waste to the Essex County recovery facility for years while
the other boroughs and the North Jersey counties relied on trailer loads to be dumped in Pennsylvania
before the rail transfer system now in place. Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties send out waste on
NYA and then interchanged with CSX in Fresh Pond.

It is too politically controversial to open new landfills, recovery facilities or incinerators, especially in a dense
metropolitan area, often requiring out-of-state shipment as the only other option.

(*)The New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC, now merged into the NJSEA) was the driving force behind the closure of waste dumping. When the NJMC was established in 1969, most of dumps were illegal and
unregulated and the NJMC worked in the 1970s and 80s to gradually close most landfills down and emphasize on conservation and environmental protection.

NYC trash is I still believe being burned in Waste Management's Wheelabrator Hudson Falls incinerator, in a low-income residential neighborhood where the city and county politicians don't care about the residents, only their own salaries. There is a subsidized elderly housing tower on a bluff, level with the top of the smokestack!! Ironically, although this converted paper bag mill has an active CP rail branch running right next to the incinerator, all the trash is trucked in. At least in Massachusetts the Wheelabrator Millbury incinerator is about as far away from houses as possible.