The city in July told the railroad it needed to submit a state environmental impact statement. The railroad and the city still remain locked in an associated dispute before the Surface Transportation Board, a three-member federal panel that oversees railroad regulation. The railroad had considered several alternatives to avoid filling the wetlands, but documents show it could find no “practicable alternative.”įederal law requires wetland replacement at a 2-to-1 ratio, and the railroad plans to do that by buying credits in the State Wetland Bank.
Army Corps of Engineers how it plans to mitigate the loss of wetlands around Pig’s Eye Lake, which is fed by an inlet from the Mississippi, and gets the necessary permits. Paul expansion, company documents show, is to take pressure off Canadian Pacific’s switching operations in Chicago and Canada.Ĭummings said the railroad plans to start construction as soon as it explains to the U.S. “But they are doing so at the expense of parkland, wetlands and neighbors who live nearby.” “They are doing this because they want to increase revenue - which makes sense,” Dimond said. Paul City Council member, who worries about the impact on parkland to the west and a residential area to the east. The Dunn Yard long has been a source of frustration over noise - train horns, banging rail cars and squealing brakes - and the railroad has been largely unresponsive, said Tom Dimond, a former St. Paul yard is critical to that transportation corridor,” Cummings said. The yard’s arrival tracks are now 7,000 feet long, and will be lengthened to 10,000 feet. 61 and the river was built in the 1950s and is not designed for today’s longer trains. Known as the Dunn Yard, the switching area between Hwy. The expansion will result in switching and blocking (sorting out and reassembling freight train loads) operations at the yard that are safer and more efficient, he said, and will keep the main lines open for those operations. Those concerns include the installation of an 880-foot-long steel wall along the Mississippi River that will rise to nearly 11 feet high, upending of the city’s riverfront development master plan and the filling-in of a 6.3-acre wetland near Pig’s Eye Lake, which the city and neighbors say would impact the nearby heron and egret refuge, one of the largest of its kind in the Upper Midwest.Īndy Cummings, a spokesman for Canadian Pacific, said the project will minimize any potential effects on the environment. Paul to accommodate 2-mile-long trains by filling in 6 acres of wetlands. “It’s like they’re a sovereign nation.”Ĭanadian Pacific now can proceed with its plans to lengthen six tracks - one of which was built without permission - to accommodate trains nearly 2 miles long without having to address a list of environmental, noise and other concerns raised by the city and those living nearby.Ĭanadian Pacific Railroad wants to expand its rail yard southeast of downtown St. “It seemed unlikely the city would prevail,” Lantry said. The city’s attorneys had consulted experts across the country on the legal doctrine of “pre-emption,” which gives railroads the authority to bypass local and state laws in favor of federal regulations covering everything from land use and pollution to controlling noise. Paul City Council, whose East Side district includes the neighborhood and parks surrounding the yard. “They don’t want to follow the rules - surprise,” said a frustrated Kathy Lantry, president of the St. Surface Transportation Board, which is known for shielding railroads from compliance with local and state laws in the name of protecting interstate commerce. The city had little choice but to concede after the railroad took its case to the U.S. Paul backed down from seeking an environmental review and permits normally required for such a project. Paul over the city’s objections, after St. Canadian Pacific Railway is going ahead with controversial plans to expand its switching yard southeast of downtown St.
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