Dozens of Curtis Bay residents and activists gathered at the entrance to CSX Transportation’s sprawling coal terminal on June 10 to demand the corporation take safety measures to prevent coal dust from polluting their community — or leave.
Chanting slogans like “When the air we breathe is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back,” the protestors left CSX an “eviction notice” as community members told stories about the coal being an inescapable presence in their homes and lungs.
Angela Shaneyfelt says coal dust has prevented her from opening her windows for the 17 years she’s lived in the neighborhood and fears it contributed to her children developing asthma.
“We don’t need coal, period. It’s a known carcinogen. We have a history of explosions. We had the one in 2021. Who knows when it’s gonna happen again?” said Shaneyfelt, who during the march held one end of a large banner that read “No coal in Curtis Bay.”
Shaneyfelt was referring to December 30, 2021 — a day when Curtis Bay residents’ worst fears were realized when a buildup of methane and coal dust caused a massive explosion at the facility; a resulting fireball sent coal dust 12 blocks away.
After the explosion, community members like Shaneyfelt teamed up with scientists and researchers at Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, and the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), which regulates heavy industry, to study the community’s concerns.
In what the state called “the most advanced community-led air quality monitoring project ever undertaken in Maryland,” the resulting report found the presence of harmful coal dust in the air in Curtis Bay. The state said it would consider its findings when reviewing the operating permit for the CSX facility, a decision expected to be released this summer.
Shaneyfelt says she understands the facility won’t be shuttered overnight, but wants authorities to create a plan to quickly phase out its use.
“They can’t shut down but they can change it to something cleaner,” she said.
According to a 2020 Abell Foundation report, 20% of children in Baltimore are diagnosed with asthma, more than double the national average. Poverty is strongly correlated with high asthma rates and with pediatric asthma-related emergency room visits, which in Baltimore are more than twice the statewide average.
A 2023 report from the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America ranks Baltimore as the 12th worst American city for living with asthma. The same report found that Baltimore has the third highest rate of asthma-related deaths.
The Port of Baltimore is the nation’s second biggest coal exporter, and CSX says it has invested $60 million over the past five years to improve safety.
“Our coal pier operations adhere to strict regulatory standards, and we regularly invest in technologies and practices that go above and beyond those standards set by federal and state governments, and maintain our own operational standards for environmental management, including those found in our environmental policy,” CSX told Baltimore Beat in an email.
Earlier this year, CSX agreed to a $1.75 million dollar settlement in a class action lawsuit over the explosion, but residents said that’s not enough. They want CSX to cover the coal piles to prevent coal dust from escaping, which so far the company has refused to do.
As residents marched toward the coal terminal, a light mist drifted on them like rain, despite the clear blue sky.
Cannons mounted on steel towers at the terminal drenched the coal piles with massive jets of water, which CSX says automatically turn on during high winds. It’s one of the ways the company, which transfers 14 million tons of coal from train to boat at the site annually, says it keeps coal dust contained. In an email, CSX told the Beat it follows stringent environmental standards and has invested millions of dollars in technology to protect public health.
The company’s assurances did little to assuage the community’s concerns.
“It’s important for me to make it known we are not breathing in clean air and we should have the right to actually breathe clean air,” Vilma Gutierrez, a junior at nearby Benjamin Franklin High who helped organize the protest, told Baltimore Beat.
“[CSX] should be held accountable for the things that they are doing, and the damage they have done,” Gutierrez said.
Historically marginalized South Baltimore communities like Curtis Bay have been ground zero for industrial pollution. The area is a heavily trafficked trucking route and home to the country’s largest medical waste incinerator that’s repeatedly been fined for violating emission limits.
But the area also boasts a storied environmental justice movement that’s already taken down major polluters.
Gutierrez is a member of the student group Free Your Voice, which in 2016 won a historic, years-long campaign to block a new trash-burning incinerator operating in their neighborhood.
The group has continued to fight to make the community less polluted and more livable. Some of its former members went on to found the South Baltimore Community Land Trust (SBCLT), which works to create permanently affordable housing for local residents.
Ever since the explosion, Free Your Voice and SBCLT have worked with longtime residents to take on CSX.
Longtime resident David Jones, a community advocate and member of the Curtis Bay community association, expressed frustration at the inaction of elected officials.
“It’s time to kind of put up or shut up with CSX. We’ve been going after this for a long time, and it hasn’t really been much resolved,” Jones said.
“We’re not getting anything from MDE. The governor is not responding to anything. We’re not getting anything from our city council. People really are not getting anything from the mayor. It’s time for us to do something because no one else is.”
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