EATON — A sugar-beet factory that’s been closed for almost 40 years is gaining new life as an industrial rail park, connecting railcars full of the heavy commodities needed by the energy sector with the trucks that haul them to their final destination.
The Eaton Industrial Rail Park, anchored by the 43-acre site once home to a Western Sugar factory, celebrated its grand opening this week. The transload facility, which connects Union Pacific trains to semi trucks, began operating last year, according to officials from Omaha Track, which teamed up with the Town of Eaton on the project.
Two companies, and , are currently using the facility primarily to bring in frac sand, the fine silica sand used in hydraulic fracturing operations, town manager Gary Carstens said. Agriculture transport could follow in the future.
“Companies that need rail access, this is a good location for them,” Carstens said. “It’s right off Union Pacific. It’s right off Highway 85.”
Carstens and town officials have been trying to trying to find a new use for the factory site for about as long as it has sat empty.
The sugar beet processing plant closed in 1976 and was finally torn down in 2013. Prior to that, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency spent $7.75 million to clean up the brownfield site, according to EPA officials. (The town of Eaton’s annual budget typically runs about $6 million to $7 million, Carstens said.)
The city acquired the property in 2010 through a tax-lien sale, Carstens said. At the time, the four-and-a-half story building was a safety hazard “ankle deep in asbestos,” Mayor Scott Moser said.
“The potential of that site was so great, but it was just sitting there deteriorating,” Carstens said. ” We knew we had to do something, but it just took that long for all the pieces to come together.”
Following the cleanup, Nebraska-based Omaha Track redeveloped the property, building roughly 3 miles of track, said Bud Mushlitz, president of Omaha Track facilities.
Omaha Track has also purchased another 95 acres of land to the south for future expansion of the rail park, he said. The company operates similar facilities in Omaha, Salt Lake City and Pond Creek, Okla.
Mushlitz said from an economic standpoint, rail is the best way to move heavy commodities.
“On frac sand, there’s a four-to-one conversion — a railcar comes in and it has about four truckloads of product,” Mushlitz said. “You get the economics of the long haul by rail and then you get the short haul by truck so you’re not trucking 1,500 miles.”
For oil and gas operations, having a transload facility in the heart of the is exciting news, said Ron Gusec, vice president of technology and development for Denver-based Liberty Oilfield Services.
Just one of its fracking fleets can go through 300 railcars of frac sand a month, he said. Prior to the Eaton facility opening, sand was trucked in from Commerce City, Colorado’s the eastern border, even Wisconsin.
“The ability to locate a facility like this as close to so much of the work that goes on in the D-J basin means we don’t have trucks on the road traveling as far as they might have to otherwise,” Gusec said. “It helps us keep traffic to a minimum.”
Emilie Rusch: 303-954-2457, erusch@denverpost.com or twitter.com/emilierusch
