Editor’s Note:

A longer version of this story appears in the July 14 weekly edition of the Business Journal.

A bid by railroad titan Union Pacific Corp. to double the capacity of its main rail yard near the ports is running into resistance from environmental and health groups, and the community.

The Natural Resources Defense Council along with Communities for Clean Ports, the American Lung Association and 10 other groups is demanding a major cut in diesel emissions at the yard before the project is started.

The face off is threatening to become a repeat of the TraPac controversy in which the NRDC and its allies halted the expansion of a Los Angeles port terminal. The impasse was broken when the port agreed to spend $50 million to reduce the environmental impact of future expansions within the port.

The railroad wants to expand the cargo-handling capacity of its 233-acre Intermodal Container Transfer Facility where containers trucked from the ports are transferred to trains for distribution across the nation.

The ports said at a recent meeting that they could give roughly $8 million to help fund a clean up of the rail yard before expansion work begins, but the opponents say the figure is too small. And the railroad has yet to say whether it will match the funds, as the groups contend is necessary.

Zoe Richmond, a Union Pacific spokeswoman, said the company acknowledges that much of its equipment is outdated, but maintains that some of the requests are unrealistic, such as its request to help develop and deploy electric trucks.