343 Boxcars On the Road from Concord to Pittsburg

Three hundred forty-three boxcars.

That’s a whole lot of recycling.

The Navy is beginning to take apart 343 boxcars at the former Concord Naval Weapons Station and will truck them to a Pittsburg facility to be cut up and recycled.

In the next two weeks, watch for big trucks to start pulling onto Willow Pass Road to take the boxcars to Pittsburg. The project is expected to generate six to eight truck trips a day between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., the Navy says.

Specialized Industrial Services Inc., a contractor with the Navy, is installing a temporary traffic signal on Willow Pass Road, probably next week.

“Our engineers will be working with them to make sure it’s safe,” said Mike Wright, director of the Concord Reuse Project, the city office responsible for working with the Navy in overseeing the preparation of the inland part of the base for development. The inland part of the base, established as Naval Magazine Port Chicago in 1942, closed in 2005.

The project includes a temporary road on the base to let the trucks swing around and enter Willow Pass Road.

“We wanted them to get rid of the boxcars so that’s great,” said Wright. “We’re monitoring to make sure they’re following their permit procedures.”

These boxcars were used, while the base was active, to take munitions from the inland part of the base to the shipping facilities on the Carquinez Straits.

The Navy takes pride in the effort. The railcar recycling project is the largest effort ever in the Navy Region Southwest Qualified Recycling Program, and will generate revenue for other Navy recycling programs, a Navy flier states.

Workers will remove several big metal pins to decouple the wheels from the box, and then use forklifts to load the box onto flatbed trucks and chain them down.

The Navy hopes to complete the breakdown of boxcars and transport of them to Pittsburg by early fall, said Gregg Smith, a public information officer for the Navy. “The rainy season is going to be our pacing system,” he said.

Environmental permits discourage the transport of boxcar pieces in the rainy season because it would disrupt the habitat of the red-legged frog, one of two endangered species on the base site. The other is the California tiger salamander.

In the last year, the Navy has removed asbestos insulation from the boxcars, Wright said.

Regulatory approvals have come from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the State Historic Preservation Office, Caltrans, Contra Costa County and the city of Concord.

In early 2010, the city of Concord adopted a reuse plan for the inland part of the base. “Reuse plan” is a term in federal law. The city has been developing an area plan with “specific land use policies and standards that will drive development in a way that will create walkable communities as opposed to automobile-reliant neighborhoods,” said Wright.

The area plan puts “flesh on the skeleton” that is the reuse plan, Wright said.

The area plan is viewable on the Concord Reuse Project website.

The inland part of the base is about 5,100 acres (out of a total of about 12,000 acres, including tidal areas along the Carquinez Straits). Of the inland portion, some 2,800 acres, mostly east of Mount Diablo Creek, including the area south of Bailey Road, is intended to remain open land, with officials working on a transfer of that to the East Bay Regional Park District, said Wright. These are hilly areas that would be hard to develop and the most sensitive habitats for animals on the property.

The Concord Reuse Project is paid for by grants, primarily by the Office of Economic Adjustment, an arm of the federal Department of Defense. Other grants come from the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

Before development can proceed, the Navy needs to prepare a federal Environmental Impact Statement. The city has an approved Environmental Impact Report prepared for the reuse plan, and would need to draft a supplemental EIR adding elements in discussion since approval of the initial report. The supplement will probably be out for public review this fall, Wright said.

Concord has been in discussions with BART about the potential of the base area next to the North Concord/Martinez BART station being the gateway of a mixed use development, including residences and perhaps parking garages shared with BART, office buildings and some ground-floor retail projects, Wright said.

Wright said he has had discussions with developers, particularly ones with experience in redeveloping closed military bases. “They have learned the lessons of what works and what doesn’t work,” said Wright.

If, as threatened in Sacramento political maneuverings, the state axes redevelopment agencies, including Concord’s, that could set the project back by as much as 10 years, Wright said.