Letter Writer is Worried About Health Impacts of Railroad Track Removal on Arcata Residents and Students

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City of Arcata is tearing up railroad track on M Street just in from the intersection with Alliance. The goal is to take away the steel track and send the toxic ties to a hazardous waste facility so that the road can be repaved without the abandoned tracks running across it. The area is part of the Bay trail and many people walk this section of the trail, particularly youth from Arcata High School just blocks away. The ties, ballast and soil under railroad tracks and the soil around them are well established to be saturated with long-lasting and dangerous chemicals including everything from reproductive toxins such as deadly dioxin, creosote and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which should not be distributed within the neighboring environment. Just downwind of this project is Alliance, a heavily traveled street, homes and sidewalks and topped by Arcata High School, visible from where the toxic soil is being disturbed.

At this site on any ordinary week day, dozens of cars are parked afternoons to pick up youth when they leave high school. Students come down the hill from Arcata High and cross Alliance to meet their rides and walk right through where the work is currently being done. The street is currently closed at the Alliance intersection yet I observed people including youth walking next to the site even while the City was tearing up track and ties. I happened upon it when I arrived at the storage facility across the street, Arcata Hide-Away Mini Storage, and was shocked to see the amount of dust being blown around and off site especially during jack-hammering but also when ties and steel were being lifted, even when a shovel was used to move a little debris. I was there to take items out of our organization’s storage but was distracted when observing the work underway and the dust it was creating. I attempted a few short videos on my phone but wasn’t able to capture the extent of dust movement though I am certainly witness to it. No water mister was being used, all the surface of where kids walk regularly whether after school or to take the developed Bay trail was covered with dirt and sand from the work.

Staff from Environmental Services came by after my call to City Hall, heard my complaint and went back to the office to see what could be done to correct the situation. For the remainder of the day, which was close to three hours since I first complained, big dust clouds continued to drift from the site along M Street to Alliance and to sidewalks and homes beyond. Arcata High School is plainly visible at the top of the hill a couple of blocks away, with houses and community and a busy road downwind of the toxic soil disturbance.

Eventually I went to City Hall and met with Karen Diemer, City Manager as city council members were drifting in for a regularly scheduled meeting at which I decided I should explain the situation as I observed it. When Diemer assured me that she and Emily Sinkhorn would attend to dealing with the dust by the next morning, today, I accepted her commitment and left for home (at my farm in Hoopa). At this point I don’t know what the City has done. But as I told them, at a minimum, dust, whether from a toxic site or not, is not allowed to be emitted from a work site and that the least that could be done would be to employ a water mister during soil disturbance and clean up of the area post disturbance, which she agreed to do.

My interest concerns the health and safety of the community where the office of Californians for Alternatives to Toxics has been based for decades, and especially for local youth who unknowingly may be exposed via the air and their shoes and clothing to dust and potentially to toxic chemicals at the site. In the interest of full disclosure I admit to having a very loved granddaughter student at Arcata High School.

Future efforts to tear up track and ties and cap the remains of toxic material at a minimum should be conducted with greater sensitivity to the surrounding environment and the people in it. Dust, even when not involving toxic chemicals, cannot legally be released from a work site. Arcata really needs to get its act together and stop this dust mess and make sure such sloppy work doesn’t happen again.

CATs encourages calls to the City of Arcata to demand that thought and care be taken when planning and undertaking city projects particularly those involving toxic chemicals and even with disturbance involving ordinary materials such as soils so that the environment and people in it are kept safe and public areas such as community trails are clean, as the city is constantly extorting its citizenry to do.

Patty Clary

Executive Director
Californians for Alternatives to Toxics