Federal agency blocks rail transfer station.

* The Federal Surface Transportation Board (STB) has voted unanimously to deny New England Transrail's application to place a rail haul operation for construction and demolition debris in Wilmington, Mass. The site would have been exempt from most state and local laws. New England Transrail will be allowed to re-file its application for such an exemption and has indicated that it will.

The operation has been designed to ship material by rail to a shuttered Olin Corp. plant, engage in what critics contend is very limited recycling and then ship most of the material off the site via truck to landfills or other destinations. Critics also contend the operation has chosen a rail site in order to qualify as a rail operation and exist under the jurisdiction of the STB, exempting it from virtually all state and local environmental laws and permits.

Many recycling and waste industry participants, as well as many Massachusetts politicians, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the residents of the town of Wilmington, opposed the operation, saying it was not really a rail operation but a waste transfer station trying to avoid the costly permitting process every other waste facility must go through.

A coalition of waste and recycling industry associations and companies has banded together to fight the company's efforts to receive an STB exemption. They claim it would give New England Transrail an unfair economic advantage of about $15 to $20 per ton by not having to follow the same rules as other waste hauling companies.

The Construction Materials Recycling Association (CMRA) has contributed to and is part of the coalition that petitioned the STB against New England Transrail, and Executive Director William Turley says recyclers should be glad the STB denied the exemption for several reasons. "First, it would have siphoned off materials from legitimate C&D recycling operations trying to play by the rules. Second, it was obvious this was a sham railroad operation, just one company's attempts to gain an economic advantage by taking advantage of a loophole in the federal railroad laws," says Turley, who is also associate publisher of Construction & Demolition Recycling.

That loophole has now come to the attention of some U.S. senators. Both Massachusetts senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry have written three letters to STB about the Wilmington matter. From New Jersey, where these quasi-rail operations first started and opposition to them has grown, U.S. Senators Frank Lautenberg and Jon Corzine have asked the STB to provide them with the "legislative solution" to close the loophole.