STANISLAUS COUNTY, Calif. — A viral video on Twitter has raised eyebrows in the Central Valley after showing a line of mysterious rail cars idling along tracks in Stanislaus County.
The video shows Doll Arntzen, host of Alaskan Patriot Network, during a visit to California. She said she was told by a rancher that some company that nobody knows brought in hundreds of railroad cars loaded with an unknown liquid.
She raised concerns due to water supply connections and rivers in the area, but also called out for anyone "in the know" to chime in.
Kennan Beard III, president and CEO of Sierra Northern Railway, did just that in a phone call with ABC10. He said there's nothing mysterious about these rail cars east of Oakdale, and he would know that because he owns the rails they're idling on.
Beard said rails cars have been stored along those rails since 2017; the rails in Stanislaus County were actually built for that very reason.
He said shortline rail companies like Sierra Northern Rail sometimes rent or lease out unused rail for rail car storage as an extra revenue stream.
While he couldn't speak to when the rail cars arrived or how long they've been there, he said the farmers in the area are well aware of what's going on -- along with the Federal Railroad Association and the California Public Utilities Association, which monitors their rail car storage.
Sierra Northern Railway also has similar setups in Tuolumne and Yolo counties.
As for the concerns raised about nearby water supplies, Beard said he doesn't own the rail cars, but he does know that the majority of them are empty and that the ones that are loaded have nothing that would leak into the ground, get into the water supply or leach off into the soil.
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