IWS invests $5M in Ohio rail upgrade

Interstate Waste Services (IWS), Teaneck, New Jersey, is in the process of upgrading 5.2 miles of track along the Harrison-Jefferson County, Ohio, line, reports WTOV 9.

The roughly $5 million project is slated to start this year. The new updates were expedited after two train derailments earlier this year.

IWS Executive Vice President David Cieply tells WTOV 9 that the rail being replaced—5.2 miles of track near the South Piney line, located between Carmen and Minerva—is outdated. He described the line as a “main artery” to bring material to the company’s landfill from Mingo Junction, a railyard in eastern Jefferson County.

ISW owns the Apex Landfill in Amsterdam, Ohio, and was recently approved for an expansion plan late last year. The scaled-back expansion includes a gondola offloading building that is set to be completed by mid-2024.

“[The project] doesn’t expand our track, it just provides another facility that enables us to unload gondolas,” Cieply told the Herald-Star last year.

Cieply tells WTOV 9 that the new rail is “head and shoulders above the other type of rail and everything that we’ve been given in terms of level of assurance.”

“We heard about this condition of the South Piney line last November, so we immediately went into action. IWS purchased all the rail with the help of Tim Drake. We purchased all the rail, we had it all laid out, but weather conditions [delayed it]."