BRUNSWICK — Town councilors narrowly rejected a proposal to send a letter asking the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority (NNEPRA) to build a planned layover facility in Brunswick that would comply with state noise and vibration standards.

The rail authority is specifically exempt from sound regulation under Maine Department of Environmental Protection (MDEP) guidelines, but a proposal from District 4 Councilor John Perreault would have sent a letter from the council asking NNEPRA to commit to using those state standards.

The council voted down two motions related to that proposal Monday night. The first rejected sending a letter to NNEPRA. Councilors David Watson, Suzan Wilson, Joanne King, Gerald Favreau and Margo Knight voted for the motion. Councilors Ben Tucker, John Perreault, Sarah Brayman and Benet Pols voted against the motion, all supporting sending a letter to NNEPRA.

Patricia Quinn, NNEPRA’s executive director, said Monday night that the rail authority could not commit to using the state’s noise standards but that a new sound study showed that the planned 60,000-square-foot train layover depot would not exceed those state limits.

Quinn said state standards are generally “more conservative” than the federal standards that the rail authority must follow, as they are based on hourly averages of noise levels, rather than average noise levels over a 24- hour period.

A second motion by Perreault modified his original letter, striking the request that NNEPRA use MDEP standards, and requesting only that the rail authority bring a Downeaster train to Brunswick this winter for sound testing.

That motion also failed by the same margin, with councilors Watson, Wilson, King, Favreau and Knight maintaining opposition to sending a letter to NNEPRA making any requests.

Quinn said that NNEPRA is considering running a “promotional excursion” train this spring, but she said that bringing a train before that time would be difficult and she cast doubts on what kind of information such a study would glean.

“In absence of the layover facility, it’s unclear what kind of empirical data could be collected as a result of this expensive exercise of bringing a train here this winter,” Quinn said. “The request is not being ignored, but it’s not easily accomplished and we’ll see how it goes in the coming months.”

Neighborhood coalition member Mary Lou Zeeman said she would like to see such a study done with a train in Brunswick out of a “moral imperative to know how much the losers will lose.”

Zeeman said that Quinn’s statements about the sound and vibration impacts on the building “don’t refer to noise generated outside of the building.”

Current plans for a 60,000-squarefoot facility would accommodate three trains inside for regular maintenance and cleaning, but a facility of that size could still depend on additional grant funding for the project, Quinn told The Times Record on Monday.

In a Nov. 3 letter, Quinn indicated to Town Manager Gary Brown that initial cost estimates from engineers at Parsons Brinckerhoff “indicate that a facility which maximizes mitigation will exceed the anticipated project budget.”

Quinn said Monday night that she is still awaiting cost estimates for the facility to find out how the design for a 60,000-square-foot facility might be affected by the budget.

“ We’re going to go out for more grants and match our budget with the design,” Quinn said.

In December, the project lost out on a federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant for $20 million that would have included funding for the Brunswick layover facility.

Quinn said that one option to make up for a shortfall in the project budget would be to return to original plans for a 40,000-square-foot layover depot that would house two trains, though the project budget and cost estimates, she said, are not yet defined.

“ I don’t have a crystal ball,” Quinn said.

Quinn said Monday that a 60,000- square-foot, three-train depot would “virtually eliminate the need for the trains to idle outside.”

Jurisdiction

Following public comments Monday, councilors debated about whether town officials should make any recommendations to the rail authority, which would have no obligation to abide by state standards.

Brayman argued that an action item in the town’s comprehensive plan gives councilors a specific charge to “protect neighborhoods.”

“I was told that this action item came out of concern that when the train came to Brunswick and when we have a great benefit to the public good, that we do not put an undue burden onto a small group of people,”

Brayman said. “We can certainly shirk it, but I think we can help to address a neighborhood’s concerns.”

Wilson stood on the other side of the debate, saying that an advisory group including three neighbors of the planned facility and town councilors King and Perreault is the appropriate forum to discuss mitigation of noise and vibration at the site.

“I think (the advisory group) is the venue for lengthy discussion about these issues and that’s where I’d like to see it happen,” Wilson said. “It’s not that I don’t want to see it discussed, but I’m more concerned about jurisdiction and venue.”

Wilson said Monday that she would support the town voting on the creation of a quiet zone around the Brunswick rail crossings, which would require improvements to the crossings to make them safe for the train to pass without blowing its horn.

As the heated topic fueled public comments from 16 speakers at a Feb. 7 meeting on the same item, chairwoman Joanne King made multiple calls Monday for public comments to stay focused on the issue of sending or not sending the letter regarding MDEP standards.

“I want to have an open public comment period, but I’ve been asked by multiple people not to have this be another three- hour session,” King said.

Questions and answers

Residents and members of a neighborhood group opposed to the construction of the layover depot at a site between Church Road and Stanwood Street said Monday that they still had questions about the facility after a 15-minute presentation from Quinn and a question-andanswer period with Quinn and the council.

“I have to say that I am terribly disappointed,” said Chris Casey, a resident of Bouchard Street, which is near the site of the planned layover depot. “Tonight feels like it was really staged. We have been asking the same questions for close to a year and we don’t get answers but tonight we get a full room and here come the answers.”

While “ terribly disappointed,” Casey said that he “ heard some things that (he’s) been waiting to hear for a long time” during Quinn’s presentation, though he said he would still like to see a Downeaster train travel to Brunswick for sound tests and analysis.

“Bring the darn train up here,” Casey said. “If (Quinn’s) right, then they can build it next to my house all day long.”

During her presentation, Quinn stressed the need for a layover facility in Brunswick, as the stop will become the end of the line for the regional train.

“ It should not be difficult to understand that a mechanical facility at the end of the line in Brunswick will support greater flexibility and more frequency and efficiency than a facility 30 miles away (in Portland),” Quinn said.

In response to scrutiny of the timeline of the planning for the layover facility, Quinn said that the layover facility was not included in the initial plans for the Downeaster because of uncertain funding.

“It was unknown whether or not we would get the money to go to Brunswick,” Quinn said.

The expansion to Brunswick, Quinn said, made it less expensive to move the layover facility from Portland to Brunswick.

“If the layover facility remains in Portland,” Quinn said, “trains will have to travel 28 miles to get to or from the Brunswick station at least one time each day in each direction.”

Quinn said that would limit the number of daily round trips to two. Quinn said scheduling will be based on availability of train slots at Boston’s North Station and that she will only have three “slots” available for trains between Brunswick and Portland.

A daily trip to and from a layover facility in Portland would count as one of those trips, Quinn said.

“These will provide little to no transportation benefits and waste available slots of frequencies that we could use to provide service between Brunswick and Freeport and Boston,” Quinn said.

Quinn added that, with Brunswick as the end of the line, trains would still be required to park in Brunswick for a period of time during the day, even in the absence of a layover facility.

“Trains in the middle of the day won’t go back and forth to the Portland layover but will be on hold on the tracks if there is no facility here,” Quinn said. “And midday layovers could last from one to five hours.”

Quinn also described the type of maintenance work that would be done inside the planned depot. There, Quinn said, trains would be refueled, inspected and cleaned.

With three trips to start, Quinn said the rail authority is looking to expand to five daily trips, an expansion she said will mostly depend on construction of parallel tracks through Yarmouth that would allow for five daily round trips.

Quinn said that an advisory group for the layover depot — including councilors King and Perreault and residents Anna Nelson, Bob McEvoy and Dan Sullivan — will meet again Thursday at NNEPRA’s Portland offices. Meetings of that group are not open to the public.

dfishell@timesrecord.com

Read transcripts of emails sent to the town council prior to this meeting below: