POUGHKEEPSIE – A CSX railroad bridge near the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie is a major concern to the Riverkeeper organization.
The bridge, which has been shored up with wooden beams, carries large freight trains, many times with tanker cars full of chemicals. In recent years they carried Bakken crude oil.
Riverkeeper’s John Lipscomb said it would be “catastrophic” should the bridge collapse under the weight of those tanker cars.
“The emergency response people actually are more concerns with the mixed cargo trains because you could have a train that has Bakken, it will have chlorine, it will have some other God knows what thing, and the emergency response people are terrified that a mixed product train going in the water, then the responders don’t even know what they are going after,” he said.
Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro has raised the red flag to the state about the issue and demanded immediate remediation action.
The bridge is under the control of the federal government and CSX says it will replace it next year.
The Hudson River Drinking Water Inter-Municipal Council, which is comprised of seven communities that draw their drinking water from the Hudson River, are also concerned about the ramifications of what Lipscomb called a “jury-rigged” bridge.
