Backed by science and fury, Curtis Bay residents Thursday night demanded that the Maryland Department of the Environment reject a new permit for the CSX Transportation coal terminal in their neighborhood.
The agency is moving to impose stricter requirements on the railroad giant’s operations.
“There is no reasonable amount of poison to put in anyone’s lungs. There is no justification for that ever,” Terrel Askew from the advocacy group Coal Kills Baltimore said at St. Athanasius Church.
“CSX made $5.6 billion in 2023. The fines that they get are in no way a means to actually make them do better.”
Department of the Environment representatives started the meeting by explaining new practices required of CSX in a draft of a five-year air quality permit — new barriers around piles of coal and water application systems for railcars entering the facility and unloading. The measures are designed to prevent dust from blowing out of the terminal.
When the MDE issued the draft permit in August, Chris Hoagland, the director of MDE’s Air & Radiation Administration, said entities found in noncompliance with legal agreements made with MDE face a fine of $25,000 per day per violation.
Brian Hammock, CSX’s lead executive in Maryland and Delaware, said at the meeting that “common carrier” laws require the company to ship coal and other goods, and that it follows EPA guidance. MDE officials have said they have the authority to enforce environmental regulations on the facility but can’t dictate to CSX what types of goods it transports.
“Particulate matter concentrations at the facility’s fence line do not exceed ambient air quality standards set by the EPA,” Hammock said, citing internal air quality reports. “Air quality of the terminal’s fence line is consistent with air quality in the Baltimore area generally.”
Hammock also said CSX plans to buy electric locomotives to replace diesel engines at the terminal. The company reported a $5.6 billion operating income in 2023 with net earnings around $3.7 billion.
A report by the Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland and MDE scientists published last December measured coal dust throughout the community on a day-to-day basis. The study used cameras to match minute-to-minute air quality with train activity at the coal facility and found levels spiked when trains were entering or exiting the facility.
“We will let the science and data identified in this study lead the way as we consider a new permit for the Curtis Bay coal terminal through the lens of environmental justice,” MDE Secretary Serena McIlwain said at the time.
Matthew Aubourg, a research associate and faculty member at Johns Hopkins’ School of Public Health, who has been working in Curtis Bay for the past two years, said that report has been peer-reviewed and was greenlit this week for publication in the academic journal “Science of the Total Environment.”
“This peer-reviewed work confirms the presence of coal dust in residential areas of Curtis Bay at two locations — one being about 1,000 feet away from the coal terminal and the other being about three-quarters of a mile away at the Benjamin Franklin High School,” Aubourg said. “So the questions as to whether or not the Curtis Bay community is exposed to coal dust has been answered, and it’s an answer that supports what residents have been observing and reporting and fighting against for decades.”
CSX hired its own analysts to evaluate the study, and they found it “flawed,” arguing in part that it tested for indicators of coal dust, rather than coal dust itself, and insisting levels are in line with EPA standards.
CSX’s Curtis Bay Coal Piers is one of two terminals in Baltimore that bring in coal mined largely in the Appalachian Mountains and load it aboard ships and barges for export to users, mostly overseas. The other is in the Canton Industrial Area. Baltimore is second in the U.S. to the port in Norfolk, Virginia, in the volume of coal it handles. Last year, Baltimore shipped 23 million tons of coal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Carlos Sanchez, a 19-year-old who graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in 2023, presented Hammock with a strip of coal dust collected by the high school after his public comment.
“There is no guarantee that the pollution would be reduced. The new requirements are inadequate,” Sanchez said. “The only clear solution is to get coal out of the community.”
Baltimore City Council Councilwoman Phylicia Porter, the only elected official seen at the meeting, voiced her opposition to the permit.
The permit is up for renewal for the first time since a 2021 explosion at the facility that sent a cloud of coal dust with nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and other harmful pollutants into the air. Last month, a federal judge approved a $1.75 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit to pay around $3,000 to eligible residents.
MDE says it is accepting public comments on the draft permit through Dec. 16.
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