[M]IDDLEBURY — Less than a decade after a freight train derailed in the downtown area, Middlebury residents are pushing back against the state’s plan to improve the town’s railroad tracks.
The Vermont Agency of Transportation wants to spend between $45 million and $55 million to repair the bridges that support two streets in downtown Middlebury, and make major repairs to the infrastructure that supports the bridges.
Finishing the rail project would complete one “missing link” on Vermont’s western rail corridor between Rutland and Burlington, according to VTrans. The tracks are currently used for freight, and the state is pushing to get passenger rail up and running on the western corridor in a matter of years.
Construction engineers would lower the rails to give freight trains enough clearance to run double-stack shipping-container cars through town. They would improve the drainage system around the rail bed and replace jointed rails with continuous welded rail.
The main contractor on the project is VHB, a South Burlington firm, which pegged the cost at around $18 million. The firm has updated the specifics on the project several times, and now expects to have a full cost estimate this year. Construction would start in spring 2016.
VHB wrote in an April presentation that plans to run two, eight-hour shifts a day are limiting the project and would cause two to three construction seasons of work. The firm says two 10-hour workdays — with four hours of quiet time in town per day — would speed up construction. That would require the town to amend or waive its noise ordinance.
VTrans says project costs would be largely be paid for by the state and the federal government. Middlebury voters approved $500,000 in 2014 for the bridge repair portion of the project, and VTrans now plans to use that money to fund part of the rail portion of the project.
Mission creep
Residents say the locally managed project started out as a simple bridge repair and has gotten out of hand since the state brought its statewide railroad mission into the picture. Townspeople who showed up at a Monday night Selectboard meeting with VTrans Secretary Sue Minter remembered the 2007 train derailment like it was yesterday.
The train traveling on Oct. 22, 2007, carried 15 cars filled with about 25,000 gallons of gasoline each, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Some of the gas leaked into nearby soil, and into Otter Creek, which is a tributary to Lake Champlain, according to the EPA.
The Associated Press reported that local students were evacuated, and an unknown number of residents were forced from their homes during the ensuing panic. The EPA later decided that the level of gas in the air after derailment was still low enough to meet federal air quality standards.
The rails have been in Middlebury since 1849, when the railroad industry was booming nationwide. The state bought the rail running through Middlebury in 1963. The Vermont Railway now leases the rail from the state, and the Federal Railway Administration regulates rail travel.
George Dorsey, who owns businesses in Middlebury, told the crowd there have been 22 derailments in the town’s history. Trains have spilled chlorine, ammonia and gasoline, according to Dorsey.
Dorsey said the train tracks pass by several schools and community landmarks; he asked the state to build a railroad bypass two miles outside of the downtown area.
Peter Langrock, a business owner, said he was 100 yards away from the most recent derailed train in 2007. He reiterated Dorsey’s plea to build a railroad bypass that would be a couple miles away from downtown Middlebury.
“Had those cars gone up [in flames], I wouldn’t be here today,” Langrock said.
“When we built the rails 150 years ago, we weren’t talking about gasoline and ammonia,” he said. “We were talking about milk cans and the milk train to Boston. We were talking about grains, lumber.”
Dan Delabruere, the rail program director for VTrans, said in an interview that rail is one of the safest ways to transport goods, adding that “99.8 percent of all materials transported by rail get to their destination without any release.”
Delabruere said that drainage issues can cause rotting along the rail infrastructure, and is one factor that can lead to derailment. Fixing the drainage in Middlebury, he said, would make the railroad safer and help prevent future derailments.
Minter said VTrans will consider a bypass option, but rail would still have to go through downtown Middlebury. Even though Vermont owns the rail infrastructure, federal law preempts the state from telling the Vermont Railway not to run freight through town, she said.
Jeff Lunstead said his family lives within earshot of the construction site. The proposed 20-hour-per-day work schedule would make it hard to sleep, he said.
“I can’t live on four hours of sleep a night,” Lunstead said. “If we can hear church bells, I’m sure we can hear pile drivers.”
Douglas Anderson is the executive director of Middlebury’s Town Hall Theater, where he says the staff books weddings and events as much as 18 months in advance.
Anderson said the back-and-forth over project time frames — and lack of certainty over what the noise level will be and when — needs to stop because the process has already affected his business.
“What do I tell the bride who says she wants to get married next June?” Anderson asked. “I say, ‘I don’t know.’ And now she’s gone. I’ve lost that deposit today.”
Minter brought about a half-dozen VTrans staffers to meet with the community and the selectboard. She said the state thought “right until this moment” that the town supported the western corridor rail project.
“This project means so much to all of us as it does to you,” Minter told the crowd. “There will be many follow-up steps to make sure that people are heard.”
