Trashing Plainfield? Say it ain't so, Jerry.

Tip-trailers haul garbage and other waste.

Many Plainfielders will find this a familiar scenario.

You are tooling along westbound in the middle lane on Route 78 -- OK, so maybe just a little over the speed limit -- when, WHOOSH, you are overtaken and passed in the fast lane by a long metal tilt-trailer covered in a canvas tarp.

Then the aroma hits you. GARBAGE. Even with your windows closed tight, GARBAGE. Politely known as 'municipal waste' as the trucks are labeled, but GARBAGE nevertheless.

Could this aromatic experience be coming to Plainield?

I have been hearing rumors that Plainfield is being considered for a rail-side transfer station, and that definitely would open the nostrils of Plainfielders and others in the neighborhood.

My interest was piqued. Just where could a rail-side transfer station be located in Plainfield?

My work on the NJ Rail and Transportation Museum proposal for Plainfield a number of years ago led me to the only immediately workable location: the rail sidings at the former National Starch plant on West Front Street.

Aerial view of the National Starch complex;
rail siding indicated in red. (Click to enlarge.)

New Jersey Transit's Raritan Valley Line operates on tracks that run behind the factory complex. And there is a spur that switches off the line and descends a graded track to a rail siding that forks into multiple branches. It's where National Starch used to receive carloads of raw materials and pack up carloads of products for trans-shipment.

It would be ideal.



The rail siding would provide a location that could be run round-the-clock, with plenty of parking and turn-around space for the noisy tilt-trailers that could bring garbage, construction debris and other waste materials for transfer and outbound shipment. Access from and to area highways would be easy from Rock or Washington Avenues and Route 28.

Sounds like a full-fledged business opportunity, right?

But could it happen without Plainfielders' notice or permission?

Seems it could.

Is Assemblyman Jerry Green on the case? Let's hope so.

The tracks behind the old National Starch property are actually owned by Conrail, not New Jersey Transit, and Conrail could use a loophole in the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act of 1995, which forbids states from regulating railroads, to build waste transfer sites without state or local oversight. (Conrail already runs freight traffic over the line on a regular basis.)

In a dispute over a waste transfer station built by the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway in Paterson, the railroad built the station without obtaining local building permits. When Paterson insisted permissions were needed, the railway sued in Federal court to bar the city's interference. It won.

Two years ago, seven cars from the NYS&W's transfer station, loaded with construction debris and headed for Binghamton, NY, derailed in Paterson, destroying a car wash and part of an auto repair business.

At the behest of local officials, Sen. Frank Lautenberg was able to get a law addressing the rail transfer stations passed, though its help is severely limited -- it only applies to railways that ask for federal funds, and it is set to expire within a year. No permanent legislation is in the works.

Will Plainfield fall victim to the same situation as Paterson, Newark and about ten other towns with rail transfer stations?

Please, Jerry, say it ain't so.

Could trailers like this soon be dumping on you?

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• Herald News: "Law attempts to control rail transfer sites"

--Dan Damon

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