THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 22, 1995 TAG: 9506220513
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JASON HIDALGO, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
New York City trash barges soon will call at Little Creek to unload tons of household garbage headed for Virginia landfills.
The Eastern Shore Railroad is building a barge-to-rail container facility at Little Creek to handle the waste.
The $3 million facility would handle all types of containerized cargo for the railroad, but most of it would be out-of-state trash, said Dan Moore, vice-president and general manager of Eastern Shore Railroad.
``That will not be the only item we'll be working with,'' Moore said. ``But it will be the biggest commodity the railroad's going to handle.''
Moore said the railroad will not handle hazardous waste. ``This will be regular household trash.''
Most of the trash will be coming from six waste disposal agencies in New York City. The trash will be dumped into sealed containers in New York, loaded on barges and shipped down the Atlantic Ocean to Little Creek.
The railroad expects the Little Creek facility to initially handle 600,000 tons of trash a year, or about 18,000 containers in the first two years of operation. The railroad plans to increase its shipment to 24,000 containers per year after five years.
At Little Creek, the containers will be unloaded at the facility and transferred to rail cars within 10 hours. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. will haul the trash to landfills in Waverly, Lawrenceville or Amelia County.
The Eastern Shore Railroad's cargo will increase because of the trash deal, but Moore said that doesn't necessarily mean that trash coming into the state will increase as well.
``A majority of the trash we're dealing with is already being trucked into Virginia,'' Moore said. ``We're just switching modes of transport to relieve the amount of highway traffic.
``Instead of having a hundred trucks coming in, you only have one train coming in at one time.''
John Hadfield, deputy executive director of the Southeastern Public Service Authority, said the transport probably wouldn't pose problems.
``I don't look at it any more differently than any other railroad transport,'' Hadfield said.
However, Hadfield said he had questions as to how long the trash will stay in the containers and how effective the containers are in isolating the trash.
``We use sealed containers that are made especially for this purpose,'' Moore said. ``These containers are also approved by the Coast Guard.''
Scheduled to open Jan. 1, 1996, the facility will include a gantry crane and two piers with railroad tracks so the containers can be easily loaded from the barges to rail cars. The railroad expects the facility to create 12 jobs in the first year and 24 jobs after five years.
The Eastern Shore Railroad's route runs between Pocomoke, Md., and Norfolk, with rail cars being barged between Cape Charles and Little Creek.
However, it's more cost effective to barge the garbage directly to Little Creek from New York instead of moving it by rail.
Funding for the facility is provided by grants from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, the Virginia Department of Transportation, the Virginia Port Authority through its Aid to Local Ports Fund and the railroad through its own Capital Improvement Fund. by CNB