last week i was watching trains at the horseshoe curve, i saw a train with lite blue containers i was told it was a garbage train. this blew my mind a whole train loaded with garbage must have had at least 100 cars. my questions are. 1 where did it come from? 2. where is it going? 3 what do they do with it when it gets there?
Quick and dirty (no pun intended) answers:
- Some big city.
- A legal landfill.
- Bury it.
Thanks to present-day environmental concerns, many cities have to dispose of their solid waste at a considerable distance from the source. A 100 car unit train of trash containers is less expensive and controversial than driving 500 garbage trucks over the road (and through other people’s communities) as a means for covering the distance.
Trains tend to be invisible. Garbage trucks are anything but…
Chuck
In all probability it was New York City garbage Enroute to the Sierra Blanca, Texas Sewage Dump. Sierra Blanca is located approximately 88 miles east of El Paso. It is the county seat of Hudspeth County. It is pretty bleak country. I have driven through or stopped in Sierra Blanca more than 100 times. I was there approximately two weeks ago.
About a mile east of Sierra Blanca the UP’s Texas & Pacific line from Fort Worth through Midland joins the Sunset line from Houston and San Antonio. It is, amongst other things, a good train watching spot.
The garbage is turned into sludge and spread or buried in an area (ranch) north of town. The UP built a spur to the plant that turns the garbage into sludge. The sludge ranch is operated by Merco. I saw a UP train preparing to depart the sludge ranch (local term) whilst in Sierra Blanca.
The site has provided jobs for a poor area that is rift with unemployment. But it has been controversial. Complaints regarding odors, health problems, pollution, etc. have arisen.
That’s a long way for garbage to go! I thought they were dumping it down abandoned anthracite coal mine shafts in eastern Pennsylvania. Either way, better than dumping it in the ocean.
Hays
It is a long way to go. As I remember the discussions about hauling the garbage to Texas, no one else would take it. Putting it in an abandoned coal mine was not a viable option.
Hudspeth County, which is in the middle of nowhere, took the garbage because of conducive geological conditions and the jobs that the sludge plant would create. Also, the Texas legislature quickly passed legislation to issue the necessary permits. Nothing gets the attention of the Lone Star State’s legislators like the opportunity to enhance state revenues without resorting to an income tax.
Hudspeth County, where 40 per cent of the population is below the poverty line, is like a third world country. County officials were glad to get the jobs and revenues generated by the sludge plant. Some of the residents in Sierra Blanca, as well as environmentalists from everywhere, claim the plant has led to increase rates of illness. Moreover, they claim that the plant generates unwelcome odors. I have been to Sierra Blanca numerous times. I had never detected an unusual order. I cannot comment regarding the health issues.
One of the drivers for hauling the garbage to west Texas was a ruling by the EPA, as well as the appropriate international regulatory bodies, that New York City could no longer dump its garbage in the oceans, which is what they had been doing.
I was in Sierra Blanca a couple of times, while stationed at Fort Bliss, TX. IIRC, it was a neat place. Didn’t they have a “World Famous” restaurant &/or bar there? CRS. I skiied up at Sierra Blanca, NM, but that is a different story…
Yar!, New York shut down all the municipal incinerators and the ones in apartment buildings. They dumped the (mostly) burned ash, etc., out in the ocean, prior to that. Next they sent the whole Magilla to the landfill on Staten Island (Fresh Kills?). Meanwhile, the MTA dumped hundreds of ‘obsolete’ “Red Cars”, from the subways, off the Jersey coast. Yuck!, methinks. I haven’t eaten a New Jersey-caught fish since!!!
Hays
The Red Cars (R-17’s, I think) were dumped to create artificial reefs to provide habitats for various forms of marine life. It is a proven technique that has been used in a lot of places and as a side benefit has improved the sport fishing in many of those locales.
I think the NYC MTA would have benefited from the scrap value of the “Red Birds”. I wonder if they steam-cleaned the hulks of bodily excrements before they were dumped in the ocean. I know is is illegal to “spit” in a NYC subway, but… I still wouldn’t eat the fish! Florida dumped thousands of cabled-together used tires off the coast of Jacksonville as “Habitats for Pisces”. Now, the salt water has taken its toll on the wire rope (duh!) and the tires are washing up on the beaches. Cool!
Depends upon the direction. If it was eastbound it was likely 64J returning empties to New Jersey from a landfill just west of Mingo Junction, Ohio. The lanfill is Apex and it’s off the former PRR Panhandle line up on the former NYC line via a connecting track.
If it was westbound it was likely 65J with the garbage on the way to the above location. Norfolk Southern takes it to Mingo Junction where it’s handed to Ohio Central (G&W) for the final haul to/from the landfill.
The above train passes by the company I work for on the old B&O sub in Parma, Oh.
SIERRA BLANCA, Tex.— There is not much here anymore, if there was ever much of anything to begin with. The town’s main street is coated in dust, and the old movie house is long shuttered. The one sign of activity – the traffic moving along elevated Interstate 10 – is a reminder that the modern world rarely stops here.
The other reminder can be found on the outskirts of this tiny town, where freight cars are being unloaded for the last time. The last sludge train from New York City arrived this month, leaving its last shipment of what officials describe as ‘‘bio-solids’’ but what others call treated sewage.
The dump in Sierra Blanca, one of the biggest sludge dumps in the world, is going out of business.
‘‘We’ve survived before without it, and I’m sure we still will,’’ said James A. Peace, the Hudspeth County judge and the area’s highest elected official.
The news came unexpectedly in June and was greeted with a mixed response in this town of 600 people in the vast, empty country about 90 miles southeast of El Paso. For local critics and environmentalists who have fought the sludge operation and recent efforts to build a nuclear waste dump here, it is a long-awaited victory. For others, it is an economic blow, resulting in the loss of 40 jobs and the planned closing of the town’s biggest private employer.
‘‘A lot of people are going to be hunting jobs,’’ said Kay Scarbrough, the county tax assessor, ‘‘and there are not any jobs here.’’
It is hard to imagine places more different than New York and Sierra Blanca, and the contrast has always underscored the mercenary marriage between the nation’s largest city and the small town where it has dumped its sewage since 1992. That year, after Congress had prohibited the city from dumping its sludge in the Atlantic Ocean, New York signed contracts with several companies to treat and transport its sewage. One of them was a Long Island joint venture, which began shipping up to
So, is the bar &/or restaurant gone from Sierra Blanca? If so, too bad. It was a cool place.
I thought the ‘product’ was garbage, not treated sewage. Minor diff, but, doesn’t all the NYC treated effluent still go into the rivers? Every little town in the country has septic tank pumpers. The ‘sludge’ is normally dumped on the gound, on pastures. The pastures thrive. I helped pump septic tanks in Vermont for a couple of summers. Not a bad extra job, of a weekend! At my cousin’s place, just south of Calgary, AB is a huge Cargill abatoir. They kill about 10,000 cattle per day! The farmers welcome the offal, called “paunch”, being spread on their fields. No charge! Lots of free bolus magnets get picked up by the tillage/harvesting equipment!
I wonder what Bill Addington will think when his general store loses half its customers. Keep the “NIMBY” flag flying, Bill!
Hays
Thanks! Rocky, for the initial post! and to jmiller 320 for his information. I guess my big question is what does NYC now do to get rid of their “product” ?
I would assume that the folks in NYC are still going to keep the pipeline full on their end. They camnnot dump it in the ocean and they have terminated their Texas connection. So since 1992 they have spent the money to transport their "product to South Texas, it would seem a futile excercise to stop that system that has been the resolution to their issue of what to do with the “product”
It was either 64J or 65J…they come from NJ and i have no idea where they go.
For the railroads in the Northeast there is good money in hauling municipal trash/garbage to landfills. Both NS & CSX are big time trash haulers.
This was posted on May 24,2010; There is another NIMBT center post, currently in this Forum’s Threads. I thought we might be ready for a Paul Harvey Thread. you know; " The rest of the story…"
Starting with this Link and since it is kinda close to Paul North’s[:-,] area, I 'll just let 'er go!
So bear with me for starters: http://www.lastnightsgarbage.com/?p=1350
FTA"…New York City has been generous with its junk, particularly after the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island closed in 2001. In fiscal year 2009, the No. 1 destination of the city’s 3.3 million tons of residential waste — not counting the commercial kind — was a landfill in Waverly, Va., where 932,536 tons were sent, according to the city’s Department of Sanitation. One of the three Morrisville area landfills — known as the Tullytown, Grows and Grows North landfills — ranked third, with Grows North pulling in 283,902 tons…"
And if youy thought escaping to Hawaii was a way to get away…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/us/23garbage.html
“Ready to Ship in Hawaii: 20,000 Tons of Garbage”
By
“Come along and ride this train”(?)
To bad I didn’t find this thread earler. I see the NYC trash trains headin’ south to Waverly several times a week herre in Richmond.
“Yep,” I tell myself, “Bloomie’s sending another load down!”
In Toronto a few years ago we had the opportunity of taking the trash to an abandoned, solid granite open pit mine way up North in Kirkland Lake. This would have meant increased business for the Ontario Northland Railway and employment up North but the bunny-huggers won out, so our trash was trucked to Michigan for several years. Someone from Michigan wrote a letter to the paper, saying " A country as big as Canada can’t find a place for it’s own garbage? Come on!" NAFTA laws made it legitimate “trade.” But now, the trash is trucked to a site near London, Ontario and yes, it smells like a hog farm. Driving on the 401 near London, or behind one of the trucks in the summer is a real treat!
I’ll tell you what, heavy duty incinerators may be anethema now, but at some point in the future I predict they’re going to make a comeback. A friend of mine in the 80’s witnessed a demontration where an incinerator of that time recieved an engine block and reduced it to slag, and no smoke. And that was 30 years ago, who knows what they could come up with now?
Sooner or later we’re going to run out of places to put the stuff.