"A CSX freight train whose cargo includes sulfuric acid derailed Tuesday afternoon on the West Shore line tracks along the Hudson River near the New Windsor-Newburgh border."
"First responders, ambulances and CSX personnel have responded to the scene. No information about possible injuries is available at this time."
"According to CSX, an undetermined quantity of fuel may have leaked from one of the train's locomotives, but no leaks of sulfuric acid have been reported."
"The train is believed to have struck a vehicle or front-end loader and derailed, according to State Trooper Steven Nevel. A locomotive came to rest sitting across nearby River Road."
"The train derailed at about 3:30 p.m. while traveling from Selkirk, N.Y., to Waycross, Georgia, according to the railroad. It consists of three locomotives and 77 freight cars total, including 38 loads of freight and 39 empty cars. The freight includes cardboard, corn oil and glass products as well as sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide, also known as lye."
"Harry M. Caudill (1922-1990) was a mountain warrior who fought for Appalachia and his native Kentucky homeland. He fought with words and political action to preserve his land and local culture, writing books, becoming a citizen activist, winning a seat in the state legislature, and rising to national prominence as a spokesman for Appalachia. During the 1950s and 1960s especially, he rose on the issue of coal mining’s destructive effects on Kentucky land and its people."
"Caudill, after years of battling with the powers that be, had succeeded in drawing attention to the plight of Kentucky and the larger Appalachian Region. Kentucky then, and still today, is besieged by corporate interests who came for the region’s natural wealth, primarily its coal. Caudill not only did battle with the coal barons, but also local corruption and local politicians – often the handmaidens of the outside interests. The cover of one of his books is displayed at right, as its title and subtitle aptly capture what Harry Caudill railed against for much of his life."
This story from 1984 on Kitgah Generating Station aka AES Someset, illustrate the paradox of what is now New York's dirtest industrial plant, when it comes to air pollution, and requires a landfill that nearly twice as much waste as Albany's Rapp Road Landfill:
"The biggest is in the the cost of preserving the environment. Somerset is described as a $1 billion plant, but actually is a $650 million power generating station, with a coal furnace at one end and a smokestack a quarter-mile away."
"That quarter-mile is filled with a jumble of buildings containing $350 million in pollution-control equipment, a complex of machines and treatment facilities that takes a score of workers to operate, and uses enough electricity to supply a city of 35,000."
"The result is that the long, low plume of smoke that drifts from the 625-foot stack over the fields of cows and crops is relatively benign, the utlility says."
"The sulfur and soot that would normally go up the stack are collected in solid form. And to avoid creating sulfur dioxide, an ingredient of acid rain - which has been blamed for damage to lakes and forests in the Northeast and Canada - the equipment uses large amounts of limestone and other substances to bind the sulfur chemically."
"The result is that the plant produces 1,250 tons of calcium sulfate and 600 tons of fly ash a day that must be hauled away."
"Disposing of this amount of material is not quite as much of a challenge as bringing in the 5,000 tons of coal that the plant burns each day. That required the construction of a 15.5-mile railroad, for $53.5 million, that connects the plant with the Conrail network."
"To supply the monthly electric needs of a family using 500 kilowatt-hours from Somerset, the utility hauls 333 pounds of coal from Pennsylvania to the site, and disposes of 110 pounds of waste."
