While the news story was a little over the top, as most railroad-related news pieces are, the base of the story has merit.
Who was there first? The school was there before the trash train. Now I know what you're going to say - the railroad has been there for 100 years. True. The garbage train was not. Let's use the same analogy as it applies to YOU. NYC Sanitation decides to change the way they store their garbage trucks, and starts to park them overnight on the public street outside of your house. Who was there first, you or the road? Do you have a right to complain? I would hope so, even though you don't own the road.
Let's face it, garbage trains are a sensitive commodity. There was so much political pressure against NYAR moving it when they started, that there was a moratorium placed against the movement of municipal waste. Why was there such a uproar? Because the residents around the rail yard knew they would bear the brunt of it.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not against railroads or the movement of garbage via rail. There is a place though for corporate citizenship. Don't let rail cars that you know are going to cause a problem sit around, particularly near a school with a longtime state senator as a chairman. If you're willing to make the money that comes from moving garbage, then you need to come up with a workable plan to keep it moving or store it in a less sensitive area.
For this piece to have been effective, they should have paid more attention to the cars that are actually causing the problem, and not a lot of boxcars and locomotives moving around. Last I saw, "rust" was not a known health hazard, and neither was water leaking out of the cars. The warnings of "Phosphine Gas" were placards placed on the cars when they were loaded maybe a month earlier and is used to deter rodents from entering cars with foodstock inside. It becomes inert shortly thereafter. If it's safe enough to be near food, it's not all that bad - unless you're a rodent.
Jay
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