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Opponents of a plan to build a $12 million, 60,000- square-foot train maintenance building have rejected an environmental assessment that describes the proposed site as suitable and without unreasonable adverse impact.


They worry that the facility — and additional trips by Amtrak’s Downeaster passenger train it would make possible — will worsen air pollution, cause damage to their homes and keep them up at night.


During a building advisory committee meeting Tuesday, residents of several neighbor- hoods near the proposed layover site continued to lob questions and accusations at local and regional rail officials.


Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, which manages Amtrak Downeaster service between Brunswick and Boston, intends to build the layover facility along a rail corridor between Church Road and Stanwood Street. Administrators from NNEPRA say the building will help reduce noise, diesel fumes and disruptive rail activity.


Bouchard Street resident Dan Sullivan — one of three members of the West Brunswick Neighborhood Coalition who sit on the NNEPRA Layover Building Advisory Committee — said he and his neighbors urged rail officials to include more filtration and noise abatement equipment in the building’s design.


Residents Robert McAvoy and Chris Kasey also sit on the advisory group.


“Before the Downeaster arrived, we didn’t have much diesel pollution in the neighborhood,” McAvoy said. “Why should we have to be in a neighborhood that will have more diesel particulates than we had before?”


The neighborhood group disputes findings within a revised draft of the environmental assessment produced in late June, which determined that the location is suitable and preferable, and that the train’s presence did not exceed noise or air quality standards.


Patricia Quinn, NNEPRA’s executive director, assured the facility’s opponents she would take their concerns to the rail service’s engineers and board members. But she repeated several times that studies conducted by numerous engineering firms have found the site suitable.


Because the Federal Rail Administration has jurisdiction over the project, neither the town nor the neighborhood group has authority to stop it if the environmental assessment finds no problem with the site or the scope of the building.


Officials from the FRA have yet to rule on the assessment.


The building advisory committee is large, comprised of officials from NNEPRA, Amtrak, Maine Department of Transportation, the Brunswick Town Council and four representatives of the West Brunswick Neighborhood Coalition.


Two advisory meetings have been held in the past three weeks, with another scheduled tentatively for Aug. 20 at Brunswick Station. Likewise, District 4 Town Councilor John Perreault said a municipal workshop on the issue has been scheduled for Aug. 13.


Tuesday’s 80-minute meeting played out in front of a gallery divided into two camps: one favoring the maintenance building and the other opposed to it. Included in the audience were several people who live near the rail yard, as well as Town Manager Gary Brown, Brunswick resident and Democratic state Sen. Stan Gerzofsky, and Dennis Bailey, a marketing consultant hired by the neighborhood coalition.


jtleonard@timesrecord.com




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