saucejstuder wrote:No new track work yet, no. The intent, to my understanding, is to run the track over to the east side of the parcel and put in a loop track.
This was filed this past Friday (March 14, 2014) by the Town of Brookhaven with the STB:
We are special legal counsel for the Town of Brookhaven. This letter concerns the
Brookhaven Rail Terminal (BRT), located in the Town of Brookhaven, Suffolk County, New
York, which over the past seven years has had a controversial history before this Board
<snip>
As shown below, such action by the Board is especially urgent here when, under the
guise of constructing a supposed "spur" line extension into the adjoining 100 acre site with
minor clearing and re-grading along the track line, BRT has recently excavated a vast swath of
the 100 acre parcel with tremendous and unapproved excavation activities deep below grade,
which can only be described as illegal soil mining.
...
The Town believes BRT and the owner of its property who is in the business of using and selling construction materials and constructionaggregate, Sills Road Realty, LLC, are in whole or in part conducting non-railroad activities at the site, are illegally selling the excavated soil for profit without complying with law, and are
using the claim of a spur track extension as a subterfuge to avoid application of the full brunt of
the Town Code restrictions on tree and vegetation clearing, soil removal and excavations, and
other restrictions. Additionally, the Town believes BRT is also unlawfully using the combined
sites for the unlawful burial of construction debris
<snip>
The BRT's website describes its current expansion plan as vastly different from the
terminal approved by the Board:
...
In a recent February 6, 2014 letter from the BRT's construction manager, Gannett
Fleming, Inc., the current expansion project is described as:
The existing Brookhaven Rail Terminal is a 28-acre parcel with
approximately 12,800 linear feet of rail track and a connection
with the Long Island Railroad. The proposed expansion would
involve extension of the facility onto an adjacent approximately
93-acre site and involve construction of an additional 12.500 linear
feet of internal track to support future warehousing/manufacturing
and cold/dry storage facilities
<snip>
reveals hints at what activities Sills Road (the non-railroad carrier which deals in
construction aggregate and other materials) or others, plans to conduct on the 28 acre and 100
acre parcels, including the "manufacturing" activity which Gannett Fleming's letter had
passingly referenced. That document shows, among other things, (1) a "POLYMER PLANT" on
the 28 acre parcel; (2) an "ASPHALT CEMENT TERMINAL" on the 28 acre parcel; (3) an
"AGGREGATE STORAGE AREA" on the 28 acre parcel; and (4) a 262,500 square foot
"PROPANE TRANSFER ST A TION" on the 100 acre parcel. A reduced-size copy of that
"FIRE SAFETY ANALYSIS" document is provided as Exhibit B, wherein we highlighted in
red-lettering features which the plan reveals.
There is more info in the filing, linked to in my first paragraph above,
The filing also includes several aerial images of the site, which do seem to show signs of sand mining, and a site plan of future site development, which may be as real as the original "spaghetti-bowl-style" track layout with loops within loops, which of course never came to pass.
