Source: Birmingham (AL) News __________________________________________ McCalla group determined to fight $112 million cargo-loading rail project Worries: Traffic, safety, noise Tuesday, July 14, 2009 MICHAEL TOMBERLIN News staff writer McCalla residents remain determined to halt a $112 million cargo-loading rail project in the southwest Jefferson County community, despite Norfolk Southern officials' confidence the company selected the best site in the area. The No Hub 4 McCalla opposition group held a meeting in the Lake View community Monday night to discuss options as they fight the project. Norfolk Southern wants to build a facility where cargo containers will be loaded onto rail cars on 316 acres between McAshan Drive and the McAdory Elementary School. The hub will be served by six intermodal trains a day and will have three loading tracks and be able to handle 165,000 truck trailers and shipping containers a year. Despite the railroad company's promises of berms, landscaping and other measures to hide the hub from nearby residents, many in the area fear it will be a loud, ugly and unsafe addition to the rural area. Terry Finch, a resident of the Sadler Ridge subdivision adjacent to the planned hub site and a leader in No Hub 4 McCalla, said the group is developing a game plan to try to fight the project on legal, environmental and regulatory grounds. "We don't think we're beat yet," he said in an interview. "There are a lot of avenues we can pursue. We just want to fight it as long and as hard as we can so that we know we did all we can do." The dozens of residents at Monday's meeting seemed to agree the best arguments against the project related to environmental concerns, the proximity to McAdory Elementary School and increased truck traffic on McAshan Drive. The immediate plan calls for filing an injunction against Norfolk Southern. That would kick off an expensive legal fight and residents began donating money to the cause at Monday's meeting. Contacting federal representatives was another call to action. Norfolk Southern said it has spent three years looking for a suitable site in the Birmingham area. Newell Baker, head of industrial development for Norfolk Southern, said the railroad company considered three sites in the McCalla area, choosing the one that would have the least impact on the people there. A main concern is areas where the railroad and streets cross - called grade crossings. McAshan Drive crosses the tracks by a bridge, keeping any backed-up trains from interfering with traffic. "That's actually one of the reasons this site was attractive to us," Baker said at a news conference last week. "There are five miles of main track there where there is no grade crossing. We're very conscious of not blocking crossings when we're serving a facility like this." Baker said the railroad looked at a large tract of land that was slated for a residential development before a bank foreclosed on the developer. That site is also on the Eastern Valley Road side of the railroad tracks but is north of McAshan Drive. He said choosing that site would mean some trains would be backed up to McAdory High School, blocking traffic on the road there while waiting to pull into the intermodal facility. "There were two alternative sites in the McCalla area." The other rejected site was on the Old Tuscaloosa Highway side of the railroad tracks south of the Jefferson Metropolitan Park McCalla, next to the OfficeMax distribution center. "It was inundated with wetlands, one," Baker said. "Two, it had a major power transmission line running through it. And, three, we would have had to of either continuously block the Kimbrell Cut-Off at the grade crossing there or find a way of building a grade separation. That step, he added, "would have meant buying numerous houses and dislocating people that were there." Norfolk Southern said they hope to work with the community to try to address concerns. A community meeting is scheduled for Aug. 18. E-mail: mtomberlin@bhamnews.com
