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The Maryland Department of the Environment and CSX Transportation finalized a settlement Friday that requires the rail company to fund an environmental project in Curtis Bay, nearly a year after an explosion at the company’s coal facility in the South Baltimore community rattled windows and released coal dust into the air.
The settlement lists five alleged violations stemming from the December 2021 blast, including one that says CSX allowed gases and odors to be released outside the property line of the coal terminal.
Under the terms of the agreement, CSX is required to pay $100,000 to the South Baltimore Community Land Trust to turn a vacant building into a community center for environmental education, research and training, according to a news release from the state agency.
The community could also decide to use money from the settlement to buy an electric van, a charge station, or other “community transportation needs,” the agency said.
“In this enforcement action the Maryland Department of the Environment took decisive steps to assign accountability for the explosion in Curtis Bay and to require actions to help prevent something like this from happening again,” said Maryland Environment Secretary Horacio Tablada.
“This enforcement action includes an important environmental project that will directly benefit the Curtis Bay community,” Tablada said. “This goes hand-in-hand with MDE’s support of air monitoring in the community and our targeted compliance effort of facilities to protect and improve environmental conditions in that area.”
In a statement, the Community of Curtis Bay Association announced Friday that the $100,000 will be the first payment into a new community-governed Environmental Justice and Zero Waste Fund, which is set up to “address the urgent health and environmental crises worsened by living next to a concentration of dozens of toxic and hazardous developments.”
Ahead of the rehab project, Co-President Greg Sawtell said, the community will meet to discuss specific plans for the community center.
“The priority is, in terms of the specifics, that the community is really at the table making those decisions,” Sawtell said.
The new community center will serve as a home base for residents who have already been doing environmental justice work in the community for a long time, he said.
Shashawnda Campbell, an organizer with the South Baltimore Community Land Trust, said Friday that the center will be a place “where people can come to organize around and have a space to talk about the different ways these companies are impacting them, and to envision a new community without these environmental injustices that we want to see, and working on how we get there.”
The community also intends to use the newly-launched fund to pursue other green projects, Sawtell said.
The settlement also requires CSX to pay a $15,000 penalty to the state, and to implement safety and emergency response improvements, the agency said. CSX must improve airflow within one of the tunnels at the Curtis Bay facility and install a gas detection system inside it to monitor for methane by no later than July 2023, according to the agreement.
Additionally, the company must work with the Baltimore City Fire Department and Baltimore City Office of Emergency Management to improve emergency response procedures and receive regular training.
Although CSX has consented to these changes and payments, the company is disputing the alleged violations outlined by the Maryland Department of the Environment in the agreement.
Last December, the explosion at a CSX coal exporting facility on Benhill Avenue rattled houses and shattered windows in South Baltimore.
The state stepped in during the summer to encourage CSX to work out a settlement rather than litigate the incident.
In a July letter, sent on behalf of the Maryland Department of the Environment, the Maryland Office of the Attorney General cited CSX for violating Maryland’s ambient air quality control law. CSX faced civil penalties as high as $25,000 per day per violation.
Curtis Bay residents have continued to press for accountability.
Two residents in October filed a lawsuit against the company, seeking class-action status for damages and a medical monitoring fund.
In November, as the one-year anniversary of the blast approached, about 60 people marched through the community carrying signs and chanting, “No coal for Christmas!”
Campbell told The Baltimore Banner during the rally that residents don’t want CSX to shut down. Rather, she said, they want the company to transition away from shipping coal and to remove the coal piles from Curtis Bay.
“They cannot control the dust that is getting into people’s homes, and they have shown that for decades now,” she said.
Community members said Friday that though the settlement is a start, it’s not enough.
The $100,000 “is absolutely, woefully inadequate” to address what residents have been going through, Sawtell said.
“Any penalties or citations are not enough and they don’t do anything to address the underlying issue — that a coal facility that close to a community is wrong,” he said.
Campbell added that the settlement “does not get CSX off the hook.”
“We are going to keep on protesting until we see them transporting a safer material that’s not coal in the community,” she said.
This story will be updated.
Reporter Cody Boteler contributed to this story.
cadence.quaranta@thebaltimorebanner.com
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Cadence Quaranta is a breaking news reporter with the Banner.
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