Proposed plan (above) for the Long Island Rail-Truck Intermodal Facility (NYS Department of Transportation).

Growing up in Deer Park, Denis Byrne spent countless days with his friends exploring the seemingly vast and wild grounds of the Edgewood and Pilgrim State psychiatric hospitals in Brentwood. There was scrub oak so thick you could hardly pass through it, towering pitch pines, man-made drainage ponds filled with tadpoles, bullfrogs and ducks. And when the long freight trains filled with coal and other materials for the hospitals pulled in, he did what many children have done before him.

“We rode a coal car, hitched a ride, all kinds of stupid things kids do,” said Byrne, 48. “I started coming over here when I was about 8 or 9 years old. “

Byrne would like his kids to have a chance to explore the property, most of which is now the 800-plus acre Oak Brush Plains State Preserve, commonly known as the Edgewood Preserve. But he says the preserve is threatened by a proposal that could bring as many as 600 trucks a day and a return of freight trains to an adjacent parcel.

Satellite view of the former Edgewood and Pilgrim State Hospitals land (Google Maps). The proposed intermodal yard is highlighted in yellow. To the west (left) is the Edgewood Preserve bounded by the curving Commack Road. North of the site is the Long Island Expressway, and to the east is the Sagtikos Parkway. Adjacent to and just northeast of the intermodal site is the Pilgrim State Psychiatric Hospital buildings still in use. Just south of the site is the Heartland Industrial Park.

The Long Island Rail-Truck Intermodal (LITRIM) facility, proposed by the New York State Department of Transportation at an estimated cost of close to $60 million, is envisioned as an answer to the thousands of heavy trucks that travel Long Island’s major highways and roads each day, adding to local traffic congestion, pollution and dangerous driving conditions. The triangular-shaped parcel of 117 acres of former hospital land adjacent to the preserve would be developed into a freight rail facility. Trucks would travel to the intermodal yard to pick up goods for local delivery or to deliver trash and goods for export off Long Island. The American Association of Railroads, an industry group, says that a freight train can move a ton of freight an average of 436 miles on a single gallon of fuel – almost four times as far as it could move by truck – and that a single freight train can remove the load of 280 trucks from the road.

The project has pitted environmentalist against environmentalist, divided elected officials and set business groups against local residents over the question of whether the project will do more harm than good to the environment. The debate centers around the question as to whether the larger, regional issue of reducing truck congestion and pollution by moving goods more efficiently by freight rail takes precedence over the preservation of the proposed intermodal site.

Groups such as Friends of the Edgewood Preserve, Citizens Campaign for the Environment and the Long Island Pine Barrens Society say the former hospital land is part of a rare oak brush and pitch pine ecosystem, is the largest open space in Western Suffolk and is a vital groundwater recharge basin for the underground aquifers that supply drinking water to most of Long Island’s almost 3 million inhabitants. Local residents point to the impact of an estimated 600 trucks a day coming through their neighborhood, spewing diesel exhaust fumes as they sit idling, waiting to be unloaded.

“Diesel exhaust causes cancer, asthma, and many more serious illnesses,” said Dix Hills mother Twila Silverman. “Homes and schools are two blocks away from the proposed facility. Children are the most susceptible to diesel exhaust.”