Dunnellon, a small community of 1,928 people within Marion County, is known locally as a retirement paradise. When thousands of railroad ties showed up without notice, residents, city and county officials began an effort to drive rail corporations out of town. Warnings, legal actions and fire concerns surfaced months before the fire.
Track Line Rail moves operation to Dunnellon
After Track Line Rail, a Texas-based rail company, was pushed out of Newberry, it sought to move a railroad tie grinding operation to Chatmire, a small, predominately Black community just outside Dunnellon city limits.
Before long, residents began complaining about a smell, not knowing railroad ties were accumulating behind their homes.
“I started noticing, really foul, objectionable, pungent odors in the air starting late last summer,” Karrin Gordon, a long-time resident in Dunnellon’s Blue Cove neighborhood, said to WUFT News.
Track Line applied for an air permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in August to proceed with the operation. A public notice of the application was released Oct. 17.
Once residents saw the public notice in a local weekly newspaper, they packed city and county meetings to warn and plead with leaders to stop the operation.
Bill White, Dunnellon’s former mayor and vice president of the Rainbow River Conservation, warned the Dunnellon City Council on Oct. 27 that the creosote-treated railroad ties could release dangerous chemicals into the air and soil, threatening residents and the nearby Rainbow River.
Creosote, a byproduct of burning coal used to preserve wood, is classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a probable human carcinogenic and contains chemicals the agency lists as “high priority pollutants.”
In areas like Florida, railroad ties are typically replaced every 8 to 15 years, but storage and grinding sites are rarely located less than 1 mile from residential neighborhoods and sensitive waterways, according to the Journal of Transportation Technologies, 2019.
“Who in the world would be so ignorant to bring thousands of railroad ties to that area and plan on grinding them up and processing them there?” White asked.
“It would be an uncontainable furnace that no fire department in this area could take care of.”Former Dunnellon mayor Bill White
Other residents joined White in warning the community about the stockpiles of railroad ties. Jason Crowder, known on social media as Flying High in Florida, flew his drone across the CSX property. His video was one of the first to show the vast stretch of railroad ties sitting in Dunnellon.
Concerns about the stockpile’s fire risk surfaced as early as October.
“What would happen if someone went out there and put a match to one of these piles?” White warned at the meeting.
Early roadblocks
The railroad tie grinding operation quickly encountered legal trouble.
Marion County issued a notice of violation to CSX Transportation in October after inspectors found thousands of Track Line ties stockpiled on CSX property at 20365 E. McKinney Ave. without proper authorization. The county issued a stop work order on Nov. 18 after the company failed to correct the violation.
Over 200 people sent written comments to FDEP opposing Track Line’s air permit application, calling for the immediate removal of the ties and citing concerns for nearby neighborhoods and the Rainbow River.
County and city leaders also sent letters to FDEP, warning the grinding operation would pose an “unacceptable risk to air quality, water resources, public health, and the community's well-being.”
With the danger of an “uncontrollable furnace” a possibility, Dunnellon Mayor Walter Green asked Marion County Fire Rescue Chief James Banta to outline how his team would respond if the ties were to catch fire.
“If these ties ignited, MCFR would immediately be forced into a series of challenging tactical decisions,” Banta wrote on Dec. 4.
Removal of railroad ties begins
After months of pressure, CSX agreed to supply rail cars so Track Line could move the ties out of Dunnellon.
But CSX gave county and city leaders no timeline for when the ties would be removed. Residents reported seeing rail cars enter the property, but progress appeared slow. By late January, CSX acknowledged Track Line had removed less than 20% of the railroad ties. CSX declined multiple requests to comment to WUFT regarding the delays and the timeline for completing the removal.
During a Jan. 13 special magistrate hearing, a judge ruled CSX was in violation of city ordinance and gave the company one month to remove the stockpile or face fines.
