News

There goes the neighborhood, residents say of railroad tankers

By Bill Moss, Published: April 7, 2016

FLAT ROCK — Some residents are expressing concern about a long line of black tankers that railroad operator Watco is storing on the inactive tracks from Flat Rock to Zirconia.

Watco, a Kansas-based short line freight operator doing business here as Blue Ridge Southern Railroad Co., has told residents said that the tankers are empty and that they’ll do no harm. Residents of Highland Lake Village, even if they buy that, are not so sure about the visual appeal of the black tankers.
Ginger Brown, a Flat Rock Village Council member and resident of the neighborhood on Highland Park Road, says she was puzzled when the cars showed up on the abandoned line on March 19. Her neighbors, knowing she’s on the Village Council, asked her to do something about it. Brown phoned Brigid Rich, the marketing director Blue Ridge Railroad.
“I called her twice last week and kind of complained a little bit,” Brown said. “She called me Friday and said some of those tankers had been called back into service. She said she couldn’t promise that they wouldn’t come back and bring friends. But they’re still there. She said they will be leaving this week. She said they might go this weekend. … I did get some information they do have a lease contract with whoever owns those cars for a year with an option to renew.”
In an interview Monday, Rich told the Hendersonville Lightning that the tankers are “empty residue cars” that have no volatile chemicals or gas. Some are labeled for carrying LP gas.
“It could be an in-and-out kind of thing,” she said of the duration. Although the line has not been used since 2002 and is not “fully in service, we can use it,” she added.
Watco has stored about 30 tankers on the rail line between Highland Lake Drive and West Blue Ridge Road and parked almost 50 hoppers on either side of Mine Gap Road in Zirconia.

Hauled crude oil

Tom Zimmerman, a neighbor of Brown, said in an email to Brown that Blue Ridge Southern Railroad’s general manager had told him that the cars “had last carried crude oil, were empty and that they would be there for an undetermined amount of time, as the owner or lessor of the cars was leasing the track that they occupy in order to ‘park’ them there.”
An oversupply of crude oil has created a surplus of tankers that need a temporary home. Zimmerman noted that some of the cars are marked with the name Carbo, a Houston company that provides materials for the fracking industry.
“It might be assumed they are also idle because of the reduced activity in the fracking industry,” he said.
Brown talked to Mayor Bob Staton to let him know about her neighborhood’s concern. But she recognizes the village has no power to intervene because the tracks are in unincorporated Henderson County.
“In the real world there’s little I can do about other than to make a pest of myself,” she said. “I’m trying to get everybody in my neighborhood involved.” But while she organizes opposition Brown said she’s grateful to Rich for returning her call and explaining the stored tankers.
“I told her one of the things that bothers us is that we had no information, no prior notice” of the tankers moving in, Brown said. “I hope that she can keep us in the loop in the future.”

Not a zoning issue

Freight cars stored legally on a line owned by a railroad company is not something Henderson County can control, County Manager Steve Wyatt said. Like the proposed Duke Energy transmission line and a large new natural gas line now under construction, it’s a disruptive land use that the county’s zoning ordinance does not reach. But unlike the transmission line, the railroad cars have provoked no constituent uprising.
“I had one call maybe a week or two ago,” Wyatt said. “Now that you’ve called I’ve gotten two. We refer them to the railroad. That’s their property. It’s a railroad. It’s commerce.”
Brown is not giving up. She plans to contact MountainTrue, the environmental organization, to see if it might get involved.
“Of course we’re relived that there’s nothing volatile in there,” she said of the tankers. “We’re also taking the railroad’s word for that. We have no way of proving that there’s nothing in them. We got word that the last time they were used they were used to haul crude oil. I feel a little bit better not having them there full of LP gas.
“That aside, we’re still upset that we have to look at these things,” she added. “My neighborhood maintains that road. We do litter pickup because that’s the approach to our home.”