Great Falls city staff are looking for solutions as plans to add two more rail lines at the Calumet refinery could leave the wastewater treatment plant stranded and West Bank Park squeezed.In less than two years, BNSF wants to expand from one rail line to three heading westward from Calumet. It would mean closing a small rail crossing at Fourth Street Northeast, behind the old Westgate Mall.But closing that crossing would isolate the city’s wastewater treatment plant, which is surrounded by Calumet to the north and the Missouri River to the south. The Fourth Street crossing is the only road access point for plant employees, delivery drivers, sanitation vehicles and emergency vehicles.Rerouting access to the wastewater treatment plant would cost the city millions, and it’s not yet clear how the work would be funded.“Being a good neighbor kind of cuts multiple ways here,” City Manager Greg Doyon said at Tuesday’s city commission meeting. “We obviously have an active railyard with BNSF, which is trying to provide a service to Calumet. I would be appreciative if those entities are mindful of the impact that is going to occur in that park and in that area with regards to access and public use.”Expansion of the rail line reflects the success of Calumet, which has for years identified a need for more capacity in its rail service and more efficient railcar switching. That is butting up against the West Bank Urban Renewal District, which has become a successful commercial and public park development just upriver.The Fourth Street Northeast railroad crossing sits on land owned by BNSF. For decades, city employees and the public have used this to access the wastewater treatment plant and West Bank Park.The first complicating detail is that the Fourth Street railroad crossing (see the location here) is within BNSF property. A decades-old agreement allows treatment plant access but limited public access. In reality, the public regularly uses that bit of road.“There is an agreement in place since the 1960-1975 era,” Great Falls Public Works Director Christoff Gaub told city commissioners on Tuesday. “It’s supposed to be controlling public access to that. Neither of us have been. So, I guess, fair to say we’ve both turned a blind eye to that requirement.”Many park users use the Fourth Street crossing to access West Bank Park from the east, along a gravel road that is mostly on BNSF-owned land and could be impacted by the rail expansion. Through the access agreement, BNSF can close it all off with 30 days’ notice.The city’s primary concern is access to the treatment plant, both for daily employees and for emergency vehicles if something goes wrong. Gaub said that once the city started thinking about options for access, new concerns arose. Construction could disrupt a major stormwater outlet, and the entire area sits in a floodplain. Building an access road from the west, through the park, would be blocked by the bathroom building.And there are concerns about how rail expansion and potential access roads might affect West Bank Park, which is less than 10 years into its redeveloped state.“And then just the character of this area, increasing the rail traffic quite a bit,” Gaub said.While BNSF and Calumet hope to complete the rail expansion in 12 to 24 months, the city is working to find a solution to its access problem. Gaub presented some preliminary cost estimates that included a controlled gate at the Fourth Street crossing ($2 million) to a new road through West Bank Park ($5 million). A combination of the two would increase costs.Gaub’s presentation on Tuesday was meant as an introduction to city commissioners, who hold the city’s power of the purse. Commissioner Joe McKenney said the problem is a good one that is the result of Calumet’s growth.“Calumet is paying the same amount of taxes of 3,777 homes,” McKenney said. “We need more industry, not less. So when these things happen, let’s say, ‘Well thank god we have this positive challenge here.’”Calumet and its subsidiary, Montana Renewables, combine to be the city’s largest taxpayer, with the city’s proceeds being more than $3 million in the current tax cycle. But the company is in its second multi-year tax protest since 2017, which has prevented millions of dollars from being distributed to Great Falls and other public entities like Great Falls Public Schools.Calumet also enjoys tax breaks from both the city and Cascade County, and it is currently appealing a request to the state to make its entire Montana Renewables plant tax-exempt. It also closed on a $1.4 billion loan from the federal government to support an expansion of Montana Renewables.However, there’s no doubt that Calumet has been an economic engine. The company identified the need for a rail expansion before Montana Renewables came online, a sign that both the oil refinery and biofuels production sides are doing well.Calumet Communications Manager Lanni Klasner told Montana Free Press in an email that the refinery’s railyard was held back by capacity challenges. With space for 130 cars, inbound and outbound traffic accounted for 60 of those spots. This meant frequent switching of car configurations and off-site storage of other railcars for daily operations. Klasner said that the additional rail will reduce congestion and reduce the number of daily switches needed to handle inbound and outbound traffic.The expansion from one rail line to three would be a short section coming out of the Calumet refinery. Gaub said that it will reduce back to one line before it reaches the wider portion of West Bank Park where the playground sits. BNSF did not return multiple requests for comment.West Bank Park is part of the West Bank Urban Renewal Tax Increment Financing District, which also includes commercial developments. With steadily increasing market values in the district, the tax increment captured in the fund has more than doubled in a decade and outpaced its debt service obligations.The TIF district does not encompass the crucial Fourth Street railroad crossing. It could potentially support construction through West Bank Park, but the fund balance isn’t near enough to cover all the costs.The city has limited options and is staring down an expensive project, Doyon said during discussions at the Tuesday city meeting. Tapping the city’s utility customers isn’t off the table.Commissioner Susan Wolff made a case for a forward-looking plan, one that considers future economic development.“Whatever decision we make, let’s not have it meet the current need,” Wolff said. “But let’s be thinking way out there when there might be further expansion or those sorts of things.”She did not say whether that future development meant the refinery, the riverside park, the growing commercial corridor or a combination.In-depth, independent reporting on the stories impacting your community from reporters who know your town.The post Rail expansion at Calumet refinery threatens access to Great Falls wastewater treatment plant appeared first on Montana Free Press.