Previously Published in The Messenger
By Matt Meduri
The long-discussed and controversial proposal to construct a rail yard in Kings Park to help cart waste and debris off Long Island amid a ballooning waste crisis has been shelved. Carlson Corp. CEO Toby Carlson sat down with The Messenger to discuss the fallout after several years of community opposition, “misinformation” dominating local headlines, and the path forward for Suffolk’s waste crisis. What started as an innovative idea to a regional problem, Carlson says the opinions and discourse have turned the project into nothing but a “train to Hell.”
“With the political climate being the way it is, I started taking a hard look at my priorities. I did not invent the waste crisis; that’s something that’s part of Long Island,” Carlson told The Messenger. “This project was never about me; it was just a great solution in a great location. It was never meant to be a political wedge or a divisive tool for the community. When I started examining the realities, I realized, ‘why am I carrying this burden and being slaughtered?’”
Carlson says he received much pushback, not so much to the rail yard itself, but more so to himself personally. Predominantly from social media comments and messages, Carlson says he has been told by community members that he is a “disappointment” to his grandfather, who bought the prospective rail yard property in 1967, and that he and his family are not the “Carlson clan” of yesteryear. Carlson has also been accused of trying to “kill the community” and turn Kings Park into East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a 2023 train derailment carrying hazardous waste that triggered evacuations and cleanups for the area, as well as nightmare fuel for the rest of the nation.
Maintaining Local Control
Carlson says that the idea of shipping waste off Long Island via rail was first conceptualized in 2004, when he foresaw a waste bubble ready to burst. Carlson renewed his interests in the plan following a 2014 Solid Waste Management Report put out by Suffolk County, a 600-page compendium that “clearly stated”, according to Carlson, the recommendation of using rail to move waste materials off Long Island, citing rail’s safety, efficiency, and effectiveness. The project was shelved indefinitely due to personal matters and the COVID-19 Pandemic. However, the waste crisis was further promulgated by the 2021 announcement of the Brookhaven landfill’s closure in 2024. The facility remains open due to lack of alternatives, but only receives construction and demolition (C&D) debris. In 2021, Carlson moved forward with the formal proposal.
“I’ve spent about $1.5 million and three years on this project,” said Carlson, who bought the current Carlson Corp. property on Old Northport Road out of bankruptcy. His grandfather bought the land and petitioned the Town to change the zoning since the property is rail-side. Carlson saw the emerging problem when Carlson Corp. began hauling C&D debris and ash for the Town of Brookhaven.
“Kings Park is such an interesting location; it’s tough to get to by trucks. If a rail yard could receive all the materials for the Kings Park-Huntington Industrial Area, all those trucks that come in and out wouldn’t have to go there. It would have been a closed system. I brought it back around 2018, formulating a plan,” said Carlson. “I saw it being a good solution.” Carlson Corp. handles trucking, mulch and soil, rock crushing, sand and gravel, and ready-to-mix concrete, among other similar commodities and services.
Much of the $1.5 million Carlson has spent on shepherding the proposal through the various hurdles was spent on legal fees, particularly those brought by the Townline Association of Commack. The expenditures include legal fees for three separate lawsuits, all of which were won by Mr. Carlson, as well as federal environmental assessments, engineering fees, advertising, time and effort, and hard costs.
However, and worst of all, Carlson says, the emotional toll has been “unbearable.” “I don’t have an ego; I’m not trying to sell my business or flip it. I just want to run a good business, have a good relationship with the community and governments, and move on with my life. It’s not worth it at all,” said Carlson. “At the end of the day, in a few years, when things start to get really hard – when there’s more trucks, higher disposal fees, higher taxes – I think people will walk into my office and ask if we can do this [rail yard proposal].”
Carlson also posits that the project could have been transferred to the supervision of the federal government, circumventing the Town Board, but refrained from making such a move.
“I could have put the whole project under federal control, but I wanted to do it the right way,” said Carlson. “Keep the state and the local governments on the private side, feds on the rail; local and federal control. I got slaughtered for doing the right thing.”
Team-Based Municipal Waste Management
Carlson’s proposal would have also employed an interesting strategy to not only maintain local control of the solid waste issue, but also provide an opportunity for the fifteen municipalities between Nassau and Suffolk counties to work together to manage their waste in a team-based model. This was also intended to be a failsafe against one town bearing the burden of another, either through resources, taxation, transit, or all of the above.
“We wanted to set up satellite locations so that each town could be responsible for their own waste. We could have had Smithtown and Huntington work together, Hempstead and Brookhaven work together,” said Carlson. “No one particular town or group of people would have to bear the brunt individually. We wanted to create balance sheets so that the towns with corresponding sheets could work together to balance their waste and resource budgets. Once the books are balanced, the town teams could come up with solutions for those particular planning units, so that there’s no one group doing more or being affected worse than anyone.”
Carlson also defends the letter sent by the Town of Smithtown to the Surface Transportation Board (STB), an independent federal agency charged with oversight of the nation’s railroads. The rail yard proposal received a stamp of approval from the STB last year. The letter outlined the Town Board’s support for the concept of carting solid waste off Long Island via rail, pursuant to the 2014 report, rather than express support of Carlson’s proposal specifically.
However, Carlson takes issue with how the letter and its intent were depicted by editor of The Smithtown News, David Ambro, and interpreted by various community organizations.
The Actors
Carlson specifically calls out The Smithtown News editor Ambro, the Townline Civic Association, and the Fort Salonga Association, as well as Suffolk County Legislator Rob Trotta (R-Fort Salonga). “When Supervisor Ed Wehrheim (R-Kings Park) sent that letter, it was to support the concept of, not the approval of, the rail yard, and Ambro took it and ran with it,” said Carlson. “The civic leaders were wrong. Pat Vecchio (R) ran this town for forty years. Those civic leaders are the same ones when Vecchio was around. It’s the same playbook: get people freaked out and the Town will shut it down.”
Carlson also decries the claims made by Ambro in thirty-seven issues of the weekly Smithtown News, with allegations and editorial comments that the proposal would turn Kings Park into East Palestine, Ohio.
“The STB won three lawsuits against the civic associations, yet Ambro and all of them continued to carry their false narrative,” said Carlson. “It doesn’t matter if you supported the project or not; you can dislike a project based on its merits, but not the narrative. It’s an echo chamber of gaslighting and manipulation, and it’s wrong.”
Carlson adds that the State permit his corporation has precludes him from handling hazmat and hazardous waste. While he agrees that trains carrying hazardous waste pose a more significant threat when they derail, such materials were never in his business model for the rail yard.
“We have less hazmats on our site than some people have in their own homes. Every household has detergent, cleaners, plastics, shampoos – many of these products have PFAS in them. Most people dump that stuff down the drain,” said Carlson. “We don’t handle those. We handle rocks, dirt, and trees. The ash that we handle is combined incinerator ash and we’re trained to handle it.”
Combined incinerator ash, or municipal solid waste incinerator ash (MSWIA), is a byproduct of burning waste, containing bottom ash and fly ash blended together to neutralize hazardous materials.
Carlson also says that the figures shared throughout dozens of Town Board meetings regarding train derailments are also intentionally misleading.
“Every day, nationally, there are three train derailments on average. Every day, nationally, there’s 1,000 truck accidents on average,” said Carlson. “The majority of derailments are at slow speeds and often happen within the yards.”
According to Injury Facts, the U.S. saw 995 train-related deaths in 2023, with 75% of them being trespass-related fatalities, often suicides. Conversely, there were roughly 6,000 truck-related deaths in 2022, according to Injury Facts, wherein 70% of fatalities were those in other vehicles.
However, attempting to quell community qualms on the project, Carlson says the local civic groups refused to even let him state his case to their boards and constituents.
“I asked to meet with the civic leaders; they closed the door on me,” said Carlson, adding that Linda Henninger, co-president of the Townline Civic Association, told him, “when you change your plan, you can come talk to us.”
“As if they’re the authorities, as if they’re running the town,” said Carlson. Carlson also accuses Legislator Trotta of “flip-flopping” on the issue. An article published in the January 26, 2023, edition of The Messenger details Legislator Trotta’s co-handling of the community meeting about the project at the Commack Library, wherein he attempted to assuage public concerns over health and posited that taxes would rise without a rail presence for waste on Long Island.
“Trotta supported it, it got fire, he flipped,” said Carlson. “If it’s not important enough for the County, towns, and civics to look at this, it’s not that important to me either.”
What’s Next?
“The tribe has spoken; they want trucks,” said Carlson, reluctantly embracing a stopgap solution to handling waste. “Carlson Corp. always has fifty trucks onsite and we just ordered seven more. We’re just going to stage for the next stage of the waste crisis.”
Carlson added that should interest in the project, or any rail proposal, be reawakened in the future, he’d work with anyone who can remain reasonable throughout the process. “
I’ll work with anyone that has a practical solution who won’t sensationalize everything and who won’t flip-flop. Certain communities pass certain burdens onto others because it’s cheaper or convenient. The environmental classism that Vecchio promoted will continue. People in other towns aren’t as rich, but they have children and lives,” said Carlson, chastising the “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) element of the backlash.
“If people want to take a victory lap, take it,” said Carlson of the now-dormant proposal. “When the time comes, the right doors will open. I won’t put my name at risk for anyone, and neither should the Town Board. They were trying to solve a problem that the County, at the same point in time, was saying we had. Who else was standing up? When taxes go up, maybe the civic groups will have an answer. 350,000 people in Smithtown and Huntington are all going to have their taxes go up because of three civic leaders, one newspaper man and the lies that they spread.”
Supervisor Wehrheim explained to The Messenger Smithtown’s prerogative in the waste crisis going forward.
“While this project generated considerable public concern, I believe it’s important to recognize that the Town’s steadfast commitment to transparency, public engagement, and a thorough environmental review process ensured that the voices of our residents were heard throughout every step of this process,” said Wehrheim. “That said, while this specific proposal is no longer moving forward, the critical issue at hand remains: Suffolk County—and all of Long Island—is facing an imminent solid waste crisis. Our landfills are nearing capacity, and if we fail to act, the outcome will be catastrophic—not only for our environment but for our taxpayers, our local economy, and the everyday commuter.”
Wehrheim adds the challenge cannot be solved by one municipality, rather with “collaboration and leadership” at all levels of government. He commends County Executive Ed Romaine (R-Center Moriches) for being a “driving force” to identify “long-term, sustainable solutions before it’s too late.”
“The goal must be to work toward a zero-waste future—but until that goal becomes attainable, we must take immediate steps to establish responsible, practical solutions for how we handle, recycle, and transport solid waste across our region,” said Wehrheim. “As always, I remain committed to keeping the residents of Smithtown informed, engaged, and at the forefront of these discussions as we continue working toward real, achievable solutions to one of the most pressing challenges of our time.”