Plans for Tahawus

I learned yesterday of the latest plans by Iowa Pacific and the rail lines to Tahawus. They plan to store hundreds of those obsolete tank cars that were used to transport Bakken crude and that the EPA and US DOT decided were unsafe and ordered off the rails. The plan is to store them there until a decision can be made as to what to do with them.

Although I don't think they will stay there forever as I suspect their scrap value is to high but I could be wrong and they will rust away in the middle of the Adirondack park.

How is this possible?  The APA can hold up a legit resort development for a decade but then allow this without any permitting?

The DEC and the APA have no control over those rails and as long as what is traveling over them does not pose a risk to the public than there is little that can be done. Maybe several 100 green peace protestors chained to the rails might work.

I saw this last week:

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2015/08/hundreds-used-oil-tanker-cars-stored-essex-county.html

Yeah it's legal and profitable (I assume) but but ...

Hope it's safe, or we get away with it.

Want to hear what Scotty thinks.

Yeah, I saw that article in the Almanack last week.  What a terrible idea.  The site is visible from various High Peak summits (well, the mine site is visible, so I assume the storage site would be visible too).  I can hardly think of a worse intrusion on the wilderness than to climb some trail-less peak like Marshall and then look down on a couple hundred rusting oil tank cars.

Or hiking Hewitts eddy

Does anybody know why Iowa-Pacific got involved with the North Creek line? I have heard different stories. I wonder what there motivation was?

http://poststar.com/news/state-and-regional/railroad-backs-off-plan-to-store-oil-tankers-in-adirondacks/article_6ed8079f-e2ab-53bd-85ed-bd40b171585b.html

Wow. They did the right thing, but for the wrong reason. I fear we haven't heard the end of this.