Officials: Rail spur at EPCAL could spur savings

As far as symbolic groundbreakings go, the one Friday morning at Calverton had an impressive crowd.

Sen. Charles Schumer - who had the only American flag shovel - and U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) joined town and county officials holding gold-painted shovels to throw dirt in the air for cameras. The groundbreaking was for a railroad spur, which by the end of the year could bring raw material to the businesses that operate at Riverhead's Enterprise Park at Calverton.

Bruce Lieberman, chairman of the New York and Atlantic Railway - the company that handles freight operations on Long Island - said this was the first major new rail spur to be developed in the dozen years he has been working in the region.

He predicted that several businesses at EPCAL would be tied into the rail spur, lowering the cost of their raw materials and reducing the number of trucks on the Long Island Expressway.

As a rough rule of thumb, a single freight car can carry as much as four large trucks can. Metro Biofuel, where the groundbreaking took place, will be getting its biodiesel fuel in 40,000-gallon tank cars, which chief executive Gene Pullo said would normally take four or five trucks to transport.

He expected the first of those tank cars to be rolling in by the end of the year.

About a dozen firms already at EPCAL are expected to use the freight service initially, and town officials said it will encourage the development of another 2 million square feet of industrial space at the industrial park.

Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter reflected that the project, first proposed in 2002, almost didn't get off the ground. When the federal government first gave the town a grant to begin planning for the spur, town officials said they didn't want it, that it could lead to unchecked development, and it tried unsuccessfully to give it back.

Walter also opposed the project before he supported it. In his campaign last year for supervisor, he opposed federal support for the 2.65-mile project because it would mean Riverhead accepting "Chinese Communist money," referring to the billions of dollars in federal bonds purchased by China.

Still, he also called on New York State to ease environmental restrictions that could hold up the work, and after his election he said he would accept $4.6 million in federal funds, along with hundreds of thousands of dollars in state aid.

Walter noted on Friday that now every town on Long Island is talking about smart growth and improving rail transportation.

"You're in a town that is actually doing it," he said.