A large pile of smelly railroad ties next to a river bike path in Laramie has community members concerned about toxic exposure to creosote, long used as a wood preservative. Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards spoke with two WyoFile reporters covering the story, Maggie Mullen and Dustin Bleizeffer.
Editor’s Note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Melodie Edwards: I wonder if you could start just by talking to me about how you started to hear this story, and what it was that seemed to be really getting people so upset.
Maggie Mullen: WyoFile started working on this story when we started hearing from West Side Laramie residents. The West Side is this historic working class neighborhood that's sort of sandwiched between the railroad in Laramie and I-80.
A few months ago, these residents were noticing that in the rail yard that runs directly adjacent to their neighborhood, these creosote-soaked rail ties were showing up in quite large numbers. Shortly thereafter, they started to notice this smell that was associated with these ties, and that pretty quickly started to affect their daily lives.
They told us they could smell the fumes from the ties both outside when they were walking around the neighborhood, but also – and maybe more critically – inside their homes.
ME: What did you guys learn about the toxicity of creosote when you started poking around?
Dustin Bleizeffer: The odor that residents are smelling is creosote. It's derived from oils from coal or wood, and it is toxic. According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), it does pose health risks, including cancer, and it can pollute soils and water. If it does pollute soils, it can be kind of “sticky” [or] hard to remove.
Railroads have been using creosote as a preservative basically to protect these wooden railroad ties from natural decay. I did learn that railroads have been using creosote to preserve railroad ties [since] back in the 1800s. In fact, when I started looking around, I found out that there was a really big operation at this Union Pacific rail yard that basically was the center of creosote treatments, dating back to 1886. It ran through until 1983, when the EPA started looking closely at it and determined that there was enough pollution there to deem this location a Superfund site. EPA, along with Wyoming DEQ (Department of Environmental Quality), stepped in to oversee remediation of that site, and supposedly, the cleanup was completed in 1999. But it was a Superfund site just for this very same thing, creosote.
ME: What is it that UP is planning to do with all of these railroad ties, and how many are we talking?
DB: Union Pacific owns the rail yard, and what they did is they leased a portion of the rail yard to a company called Omaha Track. As these railroad ties are unloaded there, they become basically the responsibility of Omaha Track.
When DEQ started having closer conversations with Union Pacific and Omaha Track, they found out that Omaha Track's plans were to stockpile up to 500,000 ties there eventually, because they want to have a stockpile to start a new facility that would shred most of these ties. Some of the ties would be sold for landscaping and whatnot. But the bulk of these railroad ties would be shredded. [ Editor’s Note: Healthy Neighborhoods, the nonprofit started by local residents in response to these rail tie stacks, used AI to estimate the number of ties at around 100,00-200,000]
The reason they want to shred these railroad ties is because they can sell that material to be burned in industrial kilns, like maybe at the Laramie Cement Plant.
ME: That seems like that would raise yet more health concerns for the local community.
DB: Absolutely. I spoke with Rep.Karlee Provenza (D-Laramie), who lives in the area, and she said, at first, the DEQ kind of acted as though this stockpile didn't really appear to violate any rules or even pose risks that were beyond what the agency can enforce on the books.
In those early conversations, they even sent out some inspectors who initially said they didn't find any obvious violations. They couldn't smell the creosote when they were walking on the pathway next to it. But when they were having these conversations with Omaha Track and learned that they wanted to stockpile 500,000 ties and then shred them, they looked at the regulations and said, "Well, that would require a solid and hazardous waste permit, and oh, by the way, you might be out of compliance today."
Omaha Track disagrees with that assessment, and they are in negotiations with DEQ.
ME: Meanwhile, Maggie, you had walked around the neighborhood and knocked on doors and talked to folks.
MM: The West Side in Laramie is this historical neighborhood, working class, and this group of neighbors have really banded together because I think they felt so caught off guard by these rail ties and how much it's really changed their living experience and their day-to-day lives.
Some of the neighbors that I spoke to described, especially in the summer months when you had these blistering hot days and the sun was casting down on these ties, some of them described having regular headaches throughout the summertime.
A lot of the houses over on the West Side, like a lot of the state, don't have central air, so folks are opening their windows at night to cool their houses down. But, of course, then that leads to dust that they say is from this rail yard.
The thing that is really concerning the neighbors that I spoke to was, just the constant concern they have about that and the uncertainty, and really feeling like this has upended their lives and that they don't necessarily feel like they have a whole lot of say over it. Which is why some of these neighbors have banded together and formed this nonprofit, and they are working with an attorney and have basically put Union Pacific and Omaha Tracks on notice that they are willing to file a lawsuit if that becomes necessary.
ME: Having gone into this one small neighborhood and one small town, I'm wondering, [do] you have some takeaways that might be informative for communities around Wyoming?
MM: That was one thing that I heard from several folks on the West Side was feeling, on one hand, while incredibly frustrated and in some ways sort of helpless, that they felt more connected to the people that live right next door. That was a silver lining that they felt like they knew their neighbors better and that they were in a better position to take care of one another in the future.
