While Governor Cuomo has come against this ill-advised plan, now we need action from the Department of Environmental Conservation and Adirondack Park Agency
At an address at the Glens Falls Hospital on October 25, 2017 concerning a new cancer study by his administration in Warren County and Upstate New York, Governor Cuomo addressed the recent controversy around storing used out-of-service oil tanker rail cars on a remote rail line in the central Adirondack Park by Iowa Pacific Holdings.
The Governor stated: “It is unsightly, it is out of character with the Adirondacks, nobody goes to the Adirondacks to look at old trains, they go there to look at the natural beauty. We don’t own the tracks, there is a question as to what legal right we have to oppose it but we oppose it 100% and we are going to do everything we can do to stop the owner from storing the trains on those tracks.”
Protect the Adirondacks applauds Governor Cuomo for his forceful denunciation of the plans by Iowa Pacific Holdings and his pledge to do everything possible to stop these plans. To date, 28 out-of-service oil tanker rail cars have been transported to Essex County where they have been placed on a stretch of siding track on the banks of the Boreas River.
“We applaud Governor Cuomo’s no-holds-barred statement of opposition to the plans by Iowa Pacific to store hundreds or thousands of rail cars in the Adirondack Park. We applaud the Governor’s pledge to do everything possible to end this practice. We eagerly await bold actions by the Department of Environmental Conservation and Adirondack Park Agency to assert their authority and stop this ill advised plan that undermines everything that the Adirondack Park is all about,” said Peter Bauer, executive director of Protect the Adirondacks.
Iowa Pacific Holdings, of Chicago, Illinois, has transported 28 out-of-service oil tanker rail cars to the remote Sanford Lake Railway in the central Adirondacks for storage indefinitely. Governor Cuomo denounced these plans strongly in public comments on October 25, 2017 in Glens Falls.
Iowa Pacific Holdings, based in Chicago, operates the Saratoga and North Creek Railway. It also owns several other small boutique rail lines around the country and has recently used many miles of these railroads to store out-of-service rail cars. Iowa Pacific leases the rail line in Saratoga County from the Town of Corinth and the line in Warren County from Warren County. These contracts prohibit storing rail cars on these lines. Iowa Pacific owns the Sanford Lake Railway in Hamilton and Essex Counties, which connects to the Warren County line in North Creek. The company brought in 28 oil tanker cars for storage on the Sanford Lake Railway in mid-October and has stated it could store over 2,000 rail cars on the roughly 29 miles of track from North Creek to the Tahawus Mine in Newcomb.
