BFI proposes to build a barge-to-rail garbage transfer station in Linden's Tremley Point. NYC trash barged to the site would move by trains to sites in Illinois, South Carolina or Georgia. At the state-of-the-art station, trash would be housed in a negative air pressure chamber, treated with odor-neutralizing agents, and clamped into air-tight rail containers. BFI is one of five companies bidding for 20-year contracts under NYC's still-unveiled long-range waste disposal plan upon the expected closure of Fresh Kills in 2001.

One rail route from Linden would follow the Port Reading line through Carteret, Woodbridge, Edison, Metuchen, South Plainfield, Piscataway, and Middlesex Borough in northern Middlesex County, on the way to landfills in the south and mid-west. In response to announcement of the transfer station plan and the daily train it would generate, Middlesex County residents have raised concerns over safety, property values, odor, and blocked railroad/street crossings. On March 29th, officials from Metuchen, Edison, Carteret and South Plainfield publicly called for citizens to contact the Middlesex Board of Freeholders, the Governor and state representatives in order to stop the BFI station. Assemblymembers Barbara Buono and Peter Barnes and a representative from Congressman Frank Pallone's office also attended. On April 6th, Middlesex County Freeholders unanimously approved a resolution calling upon Union County to notify the board when it holds public hearings on barge-to-rail transfer station plan for Tremley Point, in Linden. The station was approved by the Linden city council in February, but will require some additional state and federal permits.

But the alternative to the Linden barge-to-rail facility and others like it, is more truck traffic, which is growing by leaps and bounds even without citizens and elected officials fighting sensible rail freight plans. According to the NY Times, by the time Queens' and the rest of Brooklyn's trash starts being trucked from NYC in the middle of the year, an estimated 700,000 more trucks will cross the East River per year than before the Fresh Kills phase-out began. Under NYC's "interim plan" contracts, trucks head through NJ on their way to landfills in Virginia and Pennsylvania and their quickest route is via the NJ Turnpike or Route 1, both of which cut directly through Middlesex County. And the wave of trash trucks that Middlesex officialdom is apparently asking for will contain the NYC waste they haul far less securely than the trains contemplated by BFI.

To be successful, the BFI facility needs local community support. Similar facilities planned for Bayonne and Jersey City were stopped by residents and county officials who did not take into account the health, environmental and traffic costs brought on by trading trains for trucks. But in this case, it seems that BFI has fallen victim to an old dispute between the localities and the railroad. A Woodbridge resolution against the waste transportation plan states that Conrail/CSX has "harassed the residents of Port Reading" by "idling its train engines, sometimes as many as four at a time," disturbing residents in homes along the rail line.

In a March editorial, the Home News Tribune called the rumblings against the facility "an example of knee-jerk political leadership" and said opposing trash transport was pointless. The paper supported rail shipment as New Jersey's best alternative in an editorial on the subject last October.