Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 22, 1990 TAG: 9007220240
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MONETA LENGTH: Long
The couple's metal lawn furniture is set up around a table in their unfinished basement. Accustomed to hanging their laundry on the clothesline, they nevertheless use an automatic dryer exclusively these days.
The Bollings do all they can to elude the coal dust that has descended on their Bedford County house.
When trains hauling coal from West Virginia to Norfolk roll along the tracks behind the Bollings' house, they spew the dust, enough to leave traces on the couple's white house, cars and even the grass.
"They hit the turn and it sends everything in this direction," said William Bolling. "It's like a fog coming in."
William, 30, and Kim Bolling, 25, have decided to fight.
They've complained to Norfolk Southern, the state Air Pollution Control Board and their state and local elected representatives.
Last month, the railroad responded. Norfolk Southern offered to pay to clean the outside of the Bollings' house and the white convertible top of one of their cars, according to NS spokesman Bob Auman.
But William Bolling said no way. A one-time cleaning job would be fine - until the next train came by a couple hours later, he said. "We wouldn't accept unless they'd pay to wash the house every year, and clean the cars and pay any medical costs caused by this down the road," Bolling said.
Ideally, Bolling wants the railway to stop the dust. "I want a decent place to live," he said.
He says the house they built three years ago on land along Virginia 805 is turning gray. The track is about 100 yards down a hill and behind a row of trees from the house.
The finish on his cars - a set of old, restored Mustangs - is dulled by the coal dust, he said. The white-over-blue one that Bolling calls his "baby" now sits in the driveway with a tarp over it.
Concerned about possible health effects, the Bollings spend little time outside and are hesitant to let their 2-year-old daughter, Brittany, out to play. "It worries us," Kim Bolling said of Brittany's escapades in the back yard. "She comes in covered with black."
The Bollings want the railroad to wet down the coal with oil or water or to cover the cars, the same way truckers are required to cover their loads.
Norfolk Southern has "no active study" under way to consider such measures, said Auman.
Asked about wetting the coal, Auman said different shippers have "different views about the moisture." Oiling, he said, was not a procedure NS experts were familiar with.
Procedures such as covering coal cars can turn out to be "impractical and very expensive," he said.
The railroad - to the surprise of some state air-pollution officials in Lynchburg - is not required under state regulations to stop the trains from releasing coal dust.
In May, the state air-pollution officials responded to the Bollings' complaint by taking samples of dust from the Bollings' screen door and from a window on the house next door, where Kim Bolling's grandmother lives. Test results showed that at least half the material found there was coal dust, according to state air-pollution documents.
On May 22, the air-control officials sent a letter to Norfolk Southern's director of environmental protection giving the railroad until June 1 to comply with state regulations.
"Reasonable precautions must be taken to prevent particulate matter from becoming airborne," the letter to NS said. "It appears that no action has been taken to control airborne coal dust from the railroad cars."
In response, the railroad said that a state regulation on "fugitive dust" did not apply. It applies only to stationary sources, not to trains moving in interstate commerce, NS said.
"We were really shocked," said one Lynchburg region Air Pollution Control inspector who worked on the Bolling case. "I really wasn't aware of it."
The railroad was correct, though, according to Nancy Saylor, a policy analyst in Air Pollution Control's program development division. The way the rule is worded, rail cars are not regulated by it, Saylor said.
The fugitive-dust rule regulates matter coming from a stationary source, such as a manufacturing plant, she said. It also applies to sources that are "ancillary" to a stationary source, such as a truck used in a quarry or a coal-mining operation, for example.
"We know that it's a problem," Saylor said of the regulation. "It's not something that we have taken on yet. That's not to say that we won't do something, but we aren't right now."
For the Bollings, that leaves few solutions.
NS officials say they have had no outcry about coal dust, and they've been hauling coal for 107 years.
"In that time, it would be unusual if there had not been a complaint," said NS spokesman Don Piedmont. "I'm not aware of any groundswell about it."
William Bolling is the only Moneta-area resident who has filed a complaint on the issue, Auman said. But Bolling says a lot of his neighbors agree with him.
On the advice of a state delegate and a county supervisor, the Bollings have collected 66 signatures on petitions that denounce the coal transport as "creating a polluted and perhaps unhealthy living environment." Eventually, the Bollings will take the petitions to the government officials and hope for some action.
The fact that no one has complained before does not surprise Bolling. "It's that attitude that `We can't fight them,' that attitude of, `Who am I to fight the railroad?' " he said.
Kim Bolling's grandmother has lived in the same place, in front of the railroad tracks, since 1947.
Flossie Burroughs, who says her family was "railroad people" from way back, isn't one to criticize Norfolk Southern. "I'm not griping against the railroad company," the 74-year-old said. "But this is different."
She said there used to be significantly less coal dust because the trains were hauling more lumps of coal - and less powdery coal.
"It's gotten worse," she said. "You can clean every day, and it don't do no good."
Burroughs, who said she cannot afford to sell her house and move, has given up trying to clean up the dust. "I hit it a spot here and yonder. There's no point to clean."
by CNB