The arrogant tone of Patrick Rael’s recent letter merits attention. He dismisses the good sense and courage evinced by our Town Council members when they failed to bow to political pressure from the Brunswick West Neighborhood Coalition. The BWNC had demanded the Federal Railroad Administration tell the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority they would have to construct an Environmental Impact Statement for the Downeaster layover facility soon to be built at the old railyard next to my neighborhood. Our Town Council did not endorse this position.

He states that in so doing the Council went against “the state’s judicial system” because the latter overturned NNEPRA’s storm water treatment plan permit. Unsaid: It was a single court, not the entire judicial system, that overturned the permit on a procedural technicality; the FRA affirmed NNEPRA’s storm water treatment plan and, in a decisive refutation of every single argument put forth by the BWNC, found the layover facility would have no significant impact, in any way whatsoever, on the surrounding area.

Elsewhere from Rael, more sneers and groundless claims. The FRA also showed that all parties — and especially the BWNC — have had ample opportunity to contribute to the layover discussion, even down to engineering details for the facility itself. NNEPRA has bent over backwards on our behalf.

Regarding the legislators who have lately decided that the layover facility ought to be built elsewhere, this repeats the oldest BWNC canard, that other viable sites exist. They do not. We learned that three years ago.

The entry of out-of-town politicians represents the fruit of the BWNC strategy of intense public relations, litigation, and above all, delay. The BWNC’s goal is to kill virtually any railroad development on the Church-Stanwood site. If this wrecks the Downeaster itself, they will blame Patricia Quinn and NNEPRA.

Outside and within the Brunswick and Freeport bubbles, Mainers are outraged that a tiny group can do so much damage to our two towns and the state as a whole. Brunswick and Freeport alone will benefit to the tune of millions and millions of dollars a year once the facility is up and running in Brunswick. Without it, that money will go elsewhere — precisely what the other politicians want.

What is needed more than anything else is political leadership in Freeport and Brunswick to say, “Yes, we want this facility here in Brunswick, at the Church-Stanwood site. Let us help make it happen!” Instead, our so-called “team” in Augusta is effectively handing our Downeaster to others who recognize it for what it is: Pure gold.

Jeff Reynolds
Brunswick