Lawsuit aims to end railroad spraying

WASILLA — A collection of concerned environmental groups has filed a lawsuit in Palmer Superior Court seeking to revoke the Alaska Railroad’s permit to spray herbicides along the tracks.

“We consider the herbicide toxic to public health, fish, wildlife and the environment. We believe that it will get into the water system around the railroad,” said Becky Long, a member of the board of directors of Talkeetna-based Alaska Survival.

Also joining them in filing the lawsuit is the Alaska Community Action on Toxins and Cook Inletkeeper. The lawsuit was filed in Superior Court Thursday and assigned to Palmer judge Kari Kristiansen.

When the railroad sprayed herbicides last summer between Indian just south of Anchorage and Seward, it was the first time since 1983 it has been able to do so.

Stephanie Wheeler, the railroad’s corporate communications officer, said herbicides are just one tool the railroad uses.

“We’ll never just only spray, even if we could. It’s just not appropriate for some areas,” she said. “Herbicides are just not appropriate for areas where there’s water or where it’s just not needed.”

And the railroad had to use other means until recently and thus built up a system using hand tools and mowers.

“It’s successful to a degree, but because our summer days are so long and the sun is in the sky for so much of the day, the vegetation comes back very quickly,” she said.

Not only that, but mowing and cutting doesn’t destroy the root system of vegetation. Roots can warp tracks and cause derailment, she said.

On the other side, Long said there are other ways to take out roots. A press release announcing the lawsuit notes that the Federal Transit Authority recommended in 2003 that herbicides be abandoned in favor of something called wet infrared — technology that kills the plants using heat, but stops short of setting them on fire.

“The Alaska Railroad has tried to control vegetation along its track with nonchemical methods, including mechanical brush-cutting, manual labor, steam and burning since 1983. Despite these efforts, the volume and location of vegetation along the track has resulted in stiff fines from the Federal Railroad Administration,” the railroad says on its website.

Long also pointed out that the railroad has been able to maintain a stellar safety record for years following the ban on pesticides put in place under then-Gov. Jay Hammond.

That ban came about after Alaska Survival took the railroad to court three times. Since the railroad was federally owned, it was a federal lawsuit. The court action ended with an injunction against pesticides, which strengthened Hammond’s executive order.

But things have changed since the railroad was transferred to the state. The environmental groups challenged the permits as the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation was considering issuing them.

When ADEC issued the permits, the groups appealed to superior court, hence the lawsuit. How long it will take for the superior court to take action is an open question.

“The actual appeal that we did with DEC through the state’s administrative system, it went on from June to the end of April. So that was a long time, but it was less than a year,” Long said.

The lawsuit claims the permit application was insufficient in that it includes an incomplete accounting of all the potentially affected water bodies. The lawsuit also asks that the railroad be required to post notices in the area when it intends to spray.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.