Railroad official knew ethanol plant would overload tracks

Union Pacific Railroad officials could have told ethanol plant and city officials months ago that grain trains would overload its railroad spur.

Without that information, Baard Renewables continued planning to construct a facility near Sioux Gateway Airport. Earlier this week, Baard’s plans were derailed by the railroad, dropping its $140 million project in Bridgeport West near Sioux Gateway Airport.

“You don’t just pick a site and then come to the railroad,” Wayne Borg, senior business manager for Union Pacific’s industrial development, told The Journal Friday from Chicago.

“The point is in today’s environment, when there is more business on the rail in the history of railroads and to say, “This is my site and bring the rail here,” — those days are over. It just doesn’t work that way. We could have saved them a lot of time.”

Sioux City Journal