Proposed Intermodal Facility Turning Into Environmental Showdow...

Developers are planning to build a new Intermodal facility in Gardner, Kansas, where goods shipped by train from California are transferred to trucks for transport across the United States.

[Chris]

In a time where it's so trendy to be 'green' the last thing we need is a nasty, polluting industry to come to an area that is relatively clean. Isn't the future supposed to bring in new clean industries, not old, polluting ones? I urge everyone possible to vote against this issue when it is brought up.

[Chris]

PS - That last post shows me in Reston, VA for some reason. I'm a Gardner resident.

[Susan Morgan]

I do not feel that we need to encourage more gas guzzling, polluting trucks for our area. We do not want the added noise and pollution that these massive amounts of new and possibly foreign trucks will bring to Johnson county. Johnson county is one of the nicest and wealthiest counties in the U.S. Johnson county also provides a huge amount of tax dollars to the state of Kansas,mainly because of the high quality living that we enjoy. If the quality of life is diminished,fewer wealthy persons or companies will find it an attractive place to live. Wy would anyone want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs for Kansas.

[Debbie]

The comparisons are apples to oranges. The intermodel in California is not like the one to be built here in Johnson county. This is a "greener" and newer version. Intermodals pull truck traffic off the highways as freight is carried on rail to a more central location. One engine pulling 100's of freight loads vs 100's of trucks on the highway. It may not be pretty, but it's not as horrible as we are being led to believe either.

[Owen de Long]

There is one big question surrounding all this globalized expansion of consumer trade ultimately profiting only Big-Box corporations like Wal-Mart through "more efficient" Intermodal hubs at the BNSF site at Gardner, KS, and the K.C. Southern site at the former Richards-Gebaur Airport in southern KCMO. That huge question is: Do we really need cheaper dog food made in China (with their unregulated toxins added, as with their "cheaper" human food and medicine products also recently found to contain harmful toxins)?? And the followup question this raises: Is it really cheaper to purchase these products from Wal-Mart, et al, when the environmental costs of these Intermodal facilities is so dire on at least all their neighbors, and the health effects of their products are now proving to be so dire on their consumers, not to speak of the American jobs lost to produce competitive (and safer, U.S.-regulated products)-- along with the added risk of terrorists being transported directly to the heartland of America via the millions of containerized cargo rail cars soon coming across our border with Mexico with no possibility of realistic inspection in transit by even an army of inspectors?

[Phred]

Owen de Long wrote:

There is one big question surrounding all this globalized expansion of consumer trade ultimately profiting only Big-Box corporations like Wal-Mart through "more efficient" Intermodal hubs at the BNSF site at Gardner, KS, and the K.C. Southern site at the former Richards-Gebaur Airport in southern KCMO. That huge question is: Do we really need cheaper dog food made in China (with their unregulated toxins added, as with their "cheaper" human food and medicine products also recently found to contain harmful toxins)?? And the followup question this raises: Is it really cheaper to purchase these products from Wal-Mart, et al, when the environmental costs of these Intermodal facilities is so dire on at least all their neighbors, and the health effects of their products are now proving to be so dire on their consumers, not to speak of the American jobs lost to produce competitive (and safer, U.S.-regulated products)-- along with the added risk of terrorists being transported directly to the heartland of America via the millions of containerized cargo rail cars soon coming across our border with Mexico with no possibility of realistic inspection in transit by even an army of inspectors?

Relax, dude. This is actually a polution-reducing development, and for your information, terrorists could land anywhere they want if they're clever enough. It's not like we have closed borders. Why does every fear-mongering point have to get back to terrorism anyway? The traffic / demand is already there; build the intermodal!

[Phred]

San Diego? Weird .. I'm in Edgerton KS

[Eric Kirkendall]

I'm not sure where Debbie gets the idea this railyard/truckyard will be greener than California railyards. that's not the case.

For example, while BNSF is proposing all electric cranes in their new Intermodal in CA, and requiring the use of newer low polluting trucks and locomotives there, they are making no such offers here. This intermodal facility won't be green unless our elected officials require it as a condition of giving the BNSF what they needed - a strip of the Mildale farm, for example, and what they want - our tax dollars.

If you don't believe me, visit the BNSF Communities Matter website at http://www.communitiesmatter.com/environment....
and then ask them if our community matters that much. They haven't offered us what they offer Californian's.

Debbie wrote:

The comparisons are apples to oranges. The intermodel in California is not like the one to be built here in Johnson county. This is a "greener" and newer version. Intermodals pull truck traffic off the highways as freight is carried on rail to a more central location. One engine pulling 100's of freight loads vs 100's of trucks on the highway. It may not be pretty, but it's not as horrible as we are being led to believe either.

[Eric Kirkendall]

No, this is not a pollution-reducing development. Quite the oppposite.

Tbis is, as BNSF has said, all about getting Chinese imported goods that come in the Port of LA and Longbeach into the midwesst.
BNSF is building this yard in order to take containers *off* the rails in Gardner, and truck them to cities up to 500 miles away. They announced at a JoCo meeting in 2007 that they closed the intermodal railyard in OKC in anticipation of this yard. Instead of taking containers by train to destination cities, they will take them only as far as Gardner and truck them the rest of the way. BNSF is moving to a hub and spoke system, and moving goods by truck from the hubs and out the 'spokes'

For more info on the intermodal, visit

Phred wrote:

<quoted text>
Relax, dude. This is actually a polution-reducing development, and for your information, terrorists could land anywhere they want if they're clever enough. It's not like we have closed borders. Why does every fear-mongering point have to get back to terrorism anyway? The traffic / demand is already there; build the intermodal!

[how we are]

All that beautful top soil.