PAWTUCKET – Pawtucket Transfer Operations, the company seeking to build a 2,000-ton-per-day waste transfer station at a downtown site also under consideration as a commuter-rail stop, has lost its bid to overturn a 2004 ruling by city officials.
In a civil suit filed in U.S. District Court, Pawtucket Transfer accused the city Zoning Board of Appeals of violating due process and the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment when it denied the firm’s appeal in 2004.
But on March 20, U.S. District Judge William E. Smith ruled against the firm.
“Plaintiff seeks to fashion a federal case out of what amounts to a local planning dispute over the permitting of a transfer station,” Smith wrote in his decision. “The effort ultimately fails, in spite of apparently less than model behavior by the local zoning officials.”
The dispute dates back to 2003, when Pawtucket Transfer first approached the city planning director seeking permission to operate a “railroad shipping operations/transfer station for refuse” in former Providence and Worcester Railroad Co. rail yard.
The facility was intended to process up to 2,000 tons per day of construction and demolition debris – four times as much as the R.I. Resource Recovery Corporation handles at the state Central Landfill in Johnston – for shipment to recycling facilities or out-of-state landfills. Pawtucket Transfer said no processing would have been done on-site and all trash transfer would have taken place in closed buildings. But its plans still drew fierce opposition from local businesses, who two years ago established the Pawtucket Alliance for Downtown Success (PADS).
A certificate of zoning compliance for the facility was granted in 2003. But Planning Director Michael Cassidy later decided, and the town solicitor agreed, that the category under which it was granted did not apply to private facilities, Cassidy recalled in a 2006 interview with Providence Business News. (READ MORE) The Zoning Board upheld his decision in 2005. When that ruling was overturned by Superior Court Judge Stephen Fortunato in June 2006, the city filed an appeal.
The Pawtucket Foundation – which since 2004 has joined the city and the R.I. Attorney General’s Office in seeking to block the transfer station – applauded Smith’s decision.
The policy group also called on the state’s congressional delegation to support a key provision of the federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act of 2007, which would prevent the Federal Surface Transportation Board from pre-empting state and local regulation of solid-waste facilities. The measure was co-sponsored by U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse.
Pawtucket Transfer Operations’ majority partner, TransLoad America Inc., did not immediately respond to PBN requests for comment on the court decision.
TransLoad America Inc., based in South Orange, N.J., is a leader in rail-based transfer, transportation, recycling and disposal of solid waste. To learn more, visit www.transloadamerica.net.
