CP Rail Environmental Assessment Worksheet COMMENTS!!

An environmental assessment worksheet (EAW) for a proposed expansion of the Canadian Pacific
Railway (CP Rail) receiving yard near Pig’s Eye Lake was published by the Environmental Quality Board on Monday, March 31, 2014. A thirty (30) day comment period will conclude on April 30, 2014. The purpose of the EAW is to identify the potential impacts of the project, and to identify mitigation for those impacts. The EAW will not make a decision on whether or not the project may proceed, and is intended only to inform subsequent permitting processes. CP Rail is proposing to add an additional track (to bring the total to six) and a new access road to the existing Dunn receiving yard, and extensions to all of the tracks and the access road by approximately 3,000 feet. The extension will occur to the south, along the existing mainline tracks, roughly parallel to and just west of Highway 61. The purpose of the project is to enable the receiving yard to accommodate 10,000 foot trains. The project will result in the filling of approximately six acres of wetlands along the northern and eastern shoreland areas of Pig’s Eye Lake adjacent to the existing yard and tracks.

Due to the magnitude of the wetland impacts, an EAW is mandatory under the state rules pursuant to the Minnesota Environmental Protection Act. The City of Saint Paul is the responsible governmental unit for the EAW.Copies of the EAW are available for review at the Saint Paul Central Library, as well as, the Dayton’s Bluff and Sun Ray library branches (presumably this means you can find it at Conway Rec where the library has a pick up site...). The EAW is also available online at www.stpaul.gov/cpraileaw.

A public meeting on the proposed project and the EAW will be held on April 23 at 6 p.m. at the Battle Creek Recreation Center located at 75 Winthrop Street South, Saint Paul, MN 55119. Representatives of CP Rail, the City of Saint Paul, and the consultants who prepared the EAW will be available at the meeting to answer questions.

Comments on the adequacy of the EAW in identifying the potential impacts of the project can be posted on Open Saint Paul at www.stpaul.gov/open, emailed to josh.williams@ci.stpaul.mn.us, or mailed to Josh Williams, City of Saint Paul – PED, 25 W. Fourth Street, Suite 1300, Saint Paul, MN 55102.