Tacoma company feels railroaded by Sound Transit plan for spur lines

For nearly 30 years in Nalley Valley, a company called Ultra Poly Inc. has cooked fine, white petroleum-based powder and compressed it into hard, multicolored plastic sheets and blocks.

In the plastics business, they call it “ultra high molecular weight polyethylene,” the world’s toughest polymer.

Those black bumpers you see mounted on pilings and piers at Washington State ferry docks? An Ultra Poly product.

The fire-retardant, durable decks of U.S. Navy ships that carry landing craft? Also an Ultra Poly product.

But Chinese manufacturers have started to cut into – and undercut the prices – of the Ultra Poly market.

So company President Karl Aschenbach, who founded the company, devised a plan. If he could order his raw material – the white powder – shipped in via high-capacity train cars rather than trucked in, he could save up to a nickel a pound.

At roughly 5 million pounds a year, then, Ultra Poly and its adjacent sister company, Plastic Supply, could still remain competitive with Chinese manufacturers.

Two years ago, Aschenbach invested approximately $200,000 to install two 40-foot-high storage silos at the end of a railroad spur that shoots off the mainline track. The rail cars would pull up, and Ultra Poly’s crews would vacuum that powder from the trains into the tanks.

Since then he has negotiated with his two suppliers to arrange for transfer of the shipping methods, expected to start early next year.

But Ultra Poly has encountered what Aschenbach describes as another competitive threat – Sound Transit. The regional transit authority plans to solicit bids this fall to upgrade the track as part of its commuter rail extension between Tacoma and Lakewood.

Sound Transit has sent letters to property owners with spurs that shoot off the main track through Nalley Valley. The message: If your business actively uses the line now, Sound Transit will pay the entire costs of upgrading your spur. But if you own an inactive spur, you have to pay for it yourself.

In its letter to Ultra Poly, Sound Transit estimated the cost at up to $500,000 – and that’s only if the company puts the money in escrow by the end of October so Sound Transit’s contractor can do the work when it upgrades all the other lines. Anyone who misses the deadline also misses the economy of scale and savings of having the work done in concert with other track upgrades rather than having it done later on one’s own.

“Sound Transit just flat makes me mad,” Aschenbach said. “We are clearly getting gouged.”

Tacoma Rail released a list of its active Nalley Valley customers, which it serves by assembling trains in Olympia two days a week: Atlas Casting & Technology, Atlas Columbia Warehouse, Bird’s Eye Foods (formerly Nalley’s Fine Foods), Cascade Sonoco, General Plastics Manufacturing, Holroyd Recycling, Northwest Steel & Pipe, Parker Paint, Ply-Trim West Inc., T.E. Walrath Trucking and X-Cel Feeds Inc.

Linda Robson, Sound Transit spokeswoman, offered a semi-reasonable explanation why those customers get a freebie and others, including Ultra Poly, don’t.

Sound Transit has no legal obligation to upgrade any railroad spurs in connection with the commuter rail project, she said. However, to mitigate the intrusion and lost use of the track during construction for active users, the agency decided to cover those costs.

Robson likened the main track and spurs to a water utility that serves people’s homes. The utility maintains responsibility for costs related to upkeep of the main water line in the street. But the property owners have financial responsibility for the upkeep of the offshoot pipes that serve their homes.

A water utility that disrupted service for mainline work might generously offer to fix the connections with the mainline for active water users. But it wouldn’t pay to upgrade lines to uninhabited property since no one would suffer an inconvenience.

“If we were installing a switch (to a railroad spur) to benefit the future operations of a private business, it would not be an appropriate use of public tax dollars,” Robson said.

Since we all pay for the Sound Transit expansion, I like the frugality. But what about fairness?

Parker Paint, according to Tacoma Rail statistics, gets one train delivery a month on average the last two years. Two other businesses – Cascade Sonoco and General Plastics Manufacturing – average two train deliveries a month.

Sound Transit’s track work, however, holds up train traffic only four days a week. Tacoma Rail still makes two-day-a-week deliveries.

How does that rate as an inconvenience worthy of mitigation by spending $250,000 to $500,000 per active customer to cover 100 percent of their upgraded rail connections? While leaving Ultra Poly, which plans to start its incoming rail deliveries next year, covering all its own costs?

The responsible and fair answer should, at least, involve a cost-sharing contract between Ultra Poly and its landlord and Sound Transit.

The small company, along with Plastic Supply, employs just under 100 people in a blue collar industry we need to protect, not drive away.

Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785

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