Port, railroad enter environmental stage of new track

'No urgency' to remove tracks from downtown, railroad president says

MOSES LAKE — Plans to build a new railroad track line between Grant County International Airport and Wheeler Road are entering the environmental stage.

Port of Moses Lake industrial development manager Albert Anderson updated the port commissioners Kent Jones, Larry Peterson and Delone Krueger at their board meeting Tuesday on efforts between the port and the Columbia Basin Railroad to bring in a new line.

The goal of the new line is to provide a better route for an industrial railroad to service the industrial area around the airport. About half of the industrial property in the area is in the airport area, Anderson said, with the other half in the Wheeler area.

Columbia Basin Railroad President Brig Temple said the new track has long been a goal, but there haven't been the type of rail customers to warrant this type of investment before now.

"Now that the Port of Moses Lake is involved, we believe this is going to create a much better, shorter, less intrusive route into Moses Lake," he said. "The current route goes along the waterfront of the city of Moses Lake and serves some very nice customers, but the type of industries switching to rail are much larger, typically handle larger volumes and often are associated with hard to handle loads and hazardous materials. To get those out of the downtown commercial core makes sense."

To get a load to the airport currently from Wheeler requires a trip south from Wheeler down to Pelican Point, through downtown Moses Lake and across Highway 17 before reaching the airport.

"To go from Wheeler out to here right now, it's about 15 miles," Anderson said.

The distance from Wheeler to the airport is about 5 miles.

"It's a safety issue too," Anderson added. "If the train comes from Wheeler out to here, there's only about four railroad crossings, as opposed to about 19."

Temple said there is no urgency to remove the track from downtown Moses Lake. The railroad is repairing it this year to keep it alive, he said.

The railroad has always viewed the port as a unique property, even though it hasn't made any money in that area, Temple said, noting the railroad "only" handles about 60 rail cars a year on the existing line.

"It's not enough under ordinary circumstances to keep a line like that open, but the potential, what you see happening in Quincy with all the development going on there, we think the airport in Moses Lake is poised to do that and more," he said.

Temple said he would like to remove the current route in the next couple of years, but noted anything in rail development takes an enormous amount of time. The railroad would try to make accommodations for some of its longtime customers, Temple added.

"From our perspective, there's no rush to cut these customers off and some of them are more easily moved if it becomes an issue," he said.

Temple views the new line as a positive for the Moses Lake community, and noted rail is integral for development, with customers like Boeing and General Dynamics who would not have even considered the area without rail.

"The Genie Industries of the world are looking for something like this, the Microsofts, the Yahoos," Temple said. "What we're gearing the Port of Moses Lake for hopefully is more railroad industrial property — companies which need rail, which need proximity to Interstate 90, which may need to utilize the airport in some way."

The process is slow, Anderson echoed.

"We're doing OK," he said. "It's real important in something like this that you do it right, and not necessarily to do it fast. So we're trying to do it right."

Whenever a new railroad is built, Anderson said, if it's a main line or a trunk line — the line from Wheeler to the airport is a trunk line about 8 miles long — a permit is required from the U.S. Surface Transportation Board.

The process was originally set up so railroads would not fight each other for territory, Anderson said, but now exists more as a stage for the National Environmental Protection Act.

The board assumes every new railroad requires an environmental impact statement.

"Which is a full-blown study of the environment, which can get really involved and typically take like three years," Anderson said.

Following a recent tour from the board to meet with state and local representatives, the port district is requesting the ability to do an environmental assessment, which typically takes from 12 to 18 months.

Anderson said it's the first time in the history of the transportation board where efforts are combining with a state agency, co-leading with the state's Department of Transportation on the project in the environmental process.

"We actually requested that, because if we didn't do it that way, you'd have to go through the process with the feds and then go through a similar process with the state," Anderson explained. "They'd be studying exactly the same thing. So it makes sense, why don't we get together?"

Anderson doesn't know for certain why it took so long for the entities to team up in such a manner.

"It could be that if you look around the country, there are not that many railroads being built in the last 30, 40 years," he said. "A lot of railroads have been abandoned. We know how to abandon railroads, but nobody knows how to build them anymore."