(Radio Iowa) – Waterloo leaders are considering moving one of the city’s rail-yards to help make the predominately-black Smokey Row neighborhood safer and more equitable. The Canadian National rail-yard creates noise and air pollution, which has driven down property values for generations. Waterloo’s community planning director Noel Anderson says a 750-thousand-dollar study to move the rail-yard could be the first step toward fixing the problem.”It’s a matter of looking at the larger impact on the whole neighborhood,” Anderson says, “and how eliminating some of these problems could help the larger area.”

The rail yard has been in the neighborhood for nearly a century and it physically divides residents there from the rest of the city. The average home in the Smokey Row area is priced at about 60-thousand dollars, less than half of the rest of the city. Anderson says the rail-yard also poses daily safety risks.”It’s an unsafe situation with having a very active railroad yard in an older neighborhood,” he says. “There’s a lot more pedestrians there than you’d find on the average.”

The two-year study is underway to see how feasible it could be to move the rail-yard to an industrial part of town.