Planning Board holds off on Motiva vote
Will wait for thumbs up from attorney before voting on application
BY KATHY CHANG
Staff Writer

WOODBRIDGE - Motiva Enter-prises LLC, a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week operation, will have to wait until the next Planning Board meeting to see if it can expand the existing rail-car rack system on its Sewaren site.

Township officials, at the request of Councilman Charles Kenny, hired Robert Goode, an attorney who specializes in interstate transport and railroad law.

Goode, of the firm Arturi, D'Argenio and Guaglardi, based in Englewood Cliffs, submitted a list of questions and recommendations for Motiva's application.

"Some of these questions are directed to Conrail," said Motiva's attorney James Rhatican at the July 11 board meeting.

Rhatican said Motiva would see if Scott Muir, who works in the Government Relations Department of Norfolk Southern Corp., would be able to come to the next Planning Board meeting.

The next board meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. July 25 in town hall.

The property at 111 State St. is a 26.25-acre parcel of land located on the western side of State Street. The property is located in the M-2 heavy industrial zone and contains multiple buildings, tanks, rail lines and other facilities used for fuel refinery and storage.

Motiva proposes to demolish five existing buildings on the site and construct four new rail lines at grade level with a related 44,400-square-foot loading platform.

The project would accommodate the unloading of ethanol from rail cars at the facility.

Two existing buildings and an existing double rail line would remain on the site. The tract contains frontage along State Street.

Mechanical structures and facilities and operator shelters are proposed in the area of the expanded rail rack and are associated with the transfer of petroleum from the rail cars to the storage tanks.

Lighting and landscaping improvements also are proposed for the affected area.

Sean Murphy, the operations manager at Motiva's Sewaren Terminal, said Motiva's intent is to expand the existing rail yard to operate more efficiently.

Currently, there are three train movements.

"With the expansion, this will eliminate the 2-to-4 a.m. train movement and have a 12-hour window until the next train movement," Murphy said.

Currently, the first train movement occurs 8-10 a.m., the second train movement occurs 5-8 p.m., and the last train movement occurs 2-4 a.m. These movements require 20 hours.

The maximum train length that the rail yard is currently capable of handling is 40 rail-car units. While the 40-rail-car-unit train goes in, the other rail cars that extend out about a mile have to sit and wait in Port Reading or the barber siding track.

The expanded Motiva rail yard (six tracks instead of two tracks) will be capable of handling two entire 80- to 100-rail-car-unit trains daily, which is the preferred method of transportation of ethanol suppliers and rail carriers.

Murphy said Motiva could "honestly bring in 200 cars, 100 the first 12 hours and 100 the second."

"Not that there will be that much business, but it is possible that we would get two deliveries a day as opposed to three a day," he said.

"This won't eliminate the coupling or banging, but with the expansion, it will happen less frequently," said Murphy. "The idea is to get them [cars] on our property, close the gate and pump them off."

As of Dec. 18, 2006, Motiva, Norfolk Southern and Conrail agreed not to drill (move) between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.; however, residents said there have been a total of nine mishaps.

Karen Matye, who lives on West Avenue, said the beautiful homes in Sewaren are turning into slums and no one can have a barbecue.

"It's more than nine times that [the drills have] been past 11 p.m.," she said.

"And say if their delivery comes in late and they lock their doors, so that's like a mother locking their child out if they're past curfew," she said. "So now this train has nowhere to go, so it's going back to Port Reading, and that guy's [ticked] and he's laying on the horn because it goes back to them [Motiva] because they're not here, Conrail's not here."

Residents who came to the board meeting said there was a lull in the noise from the trains in March and part of April, but there was a resurgence of noise later in April and in May.

Philip Bujalski, the township's chief health inspector, said although the township has adopted the state noise code, railroad activity is exempt from state and local noise codes.

"The fact that the federal code exempts and supersedes [the state and local codes], there is not much we can do legally," he said. "But I think whatever opportunity we have of garnishing any voluntary agreement for the hours that are the most sacred from 11 at night to 7 in the morning where most folks are trying to sleep, if we can just maximize that."

Bujalski monitored the train activity on more than a dozen occasions between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. last fall.

"The noise of 'bang, bang, bang, bang' or what they call 'slack action,' where they pull the train out and you hear the reverse type of banging, I can assure you that [the noise] is no mere annoyance to these folks," he said. "It's a profound noise issue. It is akin to explosions and it is a very, very real problem."

Bujalski offered some promise to residents when he said he observed as recently as three weeks ago, between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., the trains stopped drilling at the "stroke of 11 p.m."

"So, apparently, they [Conrail] are expressing some intent to adhere to this 11 p.m. situation," he said.