Middleborough · Conservation Commission

A conservation group has asked federal regulators to block the company’s bid for railroad status, arguing the point of it is to put the 928,000-square-foot warehouse beyond the reach of Middleborough’s own review.

John Barrella – The G.O.A.T. News  ·  Friday, October 23, 2026

MIDDLEBOROUGH — For a year, the Conservation Commission has been working through whether a 928,000-square-foot warehouse off Wareham Street can be built without running afoul of state wetlands law. A filing with federal regulators this month raises a different question. It asks whether those rules will apply at all.

The Community Land and Water Coalition, a Plymouth nonprofit whose members include Middleborough residents, petitioned the U.S. Surface Transportation Board on Oct. 9 to reject or revoke the railroad authority sought by TransloadX Railroad Company, Inc. On its face the case concerns 37 miles of dormant track in Maine. The Coalition’s argument is about this town.

The company, the petition states, “seeks Class III carrier status not to provide common-carrier service in Maine, but to acquire the status that triggers federal preemption, and to deploy that status against municipal and state oversight of its affiliated Massachusetts operations in Framingham and Middleborough.”

That is one side’s argument, filed by an organization opposed to the warehouse, and TransloadX has not responded to it. CSX, however, has been saying something similar in its own marketing since April 2025. In announcing its Select Site designations that month, the railroad listed its Gold Level properties. The first entry reads: “South Coast Logistics Park Operated by TransloadX– Middleborough, Massachusetts.”

South Coast Logistics Park, LLC is the applicant now before the Middleborough Conservation Commission.

What the commission decides, and what it does not

The commission’s authority here is narrow. It rules on wetlands under the state Wetlands Protection Act. Zoning goes to the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Planning Board. That limited review is currently the most active public scrutiny the project faces in town.

The commission opened its hearing Oct. 1, after a September session was cancelled, and resumed Oct. 15. The applicant is South Coast Logistics Park, LLC of Cumberland Center, Maine, with Beals Associates as engineer, under state file SE220-1741.

The disputes are substantial. The state has said a 29,400-square-foot wetland area appears to sit in the middle of the proposed building footprint. The developer calls it isolated. The commission has disagreed and raised the possibility of a vernal pool. The commission has put riverfront impacts at 38 percent, above the 10 percent allowed for new construction, and has written that the project “should not be considered redevelopment.”

The town has already put a permitting problem on the record. In February 2025 comments on the state environmental report, Middleborough reported that tree cutting at the site “was conducted without any permits and some of the cutting may have occurred in the wetland resource area 100-foot buffer zone.” Roughly 13 acres had been logged.

All of that assumes the commission’s rules govern the property. The federal filing puts that assumption in play.

What CSX has published about the site

CSX has promoted the Middleborough property for a year and a half. Its Massachusetts state fact sheet lists two CSX Select Sites in the Commonwealth, and the first is South Coast Logistics Park in Middleborough, Plymouth County. The fact sheet describes Select Sites as “certified and ready for rapid development.”

The April 2025 announcement went further and named the operator.

The spur in the state filings

Rail has never been incidental to the Wareham Street project. The state’s March 17, 2025 certificate on the supplemental draft environmental impact report, filed as the Middleborough Logistics Park under EEA No. 13771, discloses that Phase 1 includes a rail spur running off the tracks along the property’s eastern boundary, with projected use of about three railcars per day. A second, parallel spur is contemplated for Phase 2, with wetland impacts estimated at roughly 33,000 square feet.

The project has received or will receive money through MassDOT’s Industrial Rail Access Program, which is part of why state environmental jurisdiction over the site is as broad as it is.

What the state filings do not say, the Coalition notes, is who would run the trains. The environmental report “does not identify who owns the rail corridor, who controls the freight operating rights, or what carrier would actually provide service,” the petition states, even as the project is promoted in part on rail service reducing truck traffic.

Who runs TransloadX

Massachusetts Secretary of State corporate records attached to the petition show TransloadX, LLC is managed by John P. DeWaele III of Blackstone and Michael R. Milanoski of Cohasset. A second entity, TransloadX Logistics, LLC, organized in June 2024, lists DeWaele as sole manager. The Coalition says the same two men control TransloadX Railroad Company, Inc., which filed for the Maine authority on March 17, 2026 from an address in Nashua, N.H.

Milanoski is also the proponent of the Middleborough Logistics Park. The petition identifies him as having appeared this month before the Conservation Commission as the representative of South Coast Logistics Park, LLC.

The Maine lines, the Augusta Branch and the Bucksport Branch, are dormant. The petition says the record discloses no current customer on either branch, no identified prospective traffic and no shipper commitment. That absence is the Coalition’s argument. Authority sought over track with no customers, it says, is difficult to explain as anything other than a means of obtaining the status itself.

The Board has signaled doubts of its own. On April 14 it postponed the effective date “until further order,” finding that “additional information is needed to determine whether this transaction is appropriate for class exemption.” Two railroad labor unions, a competing railroad and a former rail journalist have all objected.

The order in Framingham

There is a live example of how this plays out, 50 miles up Route 495.

On Sept. 29, Framingham Building Commissioner Fred Bray ordered TransloadX to cease and desist all operations at 480 Hollis St., a CSX-owned property, finding the company was running a “storage and distribution facility” without the special permit city zoning requires.

Bray wrote that he met with Milanoski and DeWaele on Sept. 17 and had asked repeatedly, in writing, for a description of the business. DeWaele wrote back that TransloadX is a “delivery service.” Bray rejected that.

“What DeWaele leaves out of his description in his letter is the storage component of their operation. Building materials are openly stored on-site until distributed somewhere else.”

Bray also dismissed the argument that the absence of a building meant there was no “facility,” calling that claim “factually incorrect,” and noted that DeWaele’s definition of “delivery services” came from a source Bray could not identify.

The order carries a compliance deadline of Oct. 29, six days from publication, after which $300 daily fines accrue unless the company appeals to the Zoning Board of Appeals or states in writing that it will seek a special permit. As of the Oct. 9 filing, the petition says, neither had happened.

The court record

Much of the petition goes to whether these applicants should be trusted with federal operating authority.

It points to Massachusetts Superior Court rulings in Milanoski v. Delli Priscoli, litigation arising from a failed attempt to buy the Grafton and Upton Railroad. According to the petition, the court found Milanoski and DeWaele engaged in “unfair and inequitable conduct,” found they “intentionally violated” a preliminary injunction, held them in contempt, discredited their testimony regarding compliance, and found they “come to court with unclean hands.” The court later awarded the Grafton and Upton Railroad its fees and costs.

Those characterizations are the Coalition’s own, drawn from decisions filed as exhibits. The argument built on them is narrow. An agency deciding whether to grant federal authority is entitled to weigh whether an applicant’s principals follow direct judicial orders.

Middleborough’s money

Two threads of public funding run through the filing. The first is the town’s own.

In 2024, Middleborough partnered to obtain a $2.8 million MassWorks infrastructure grant. The state’s award listing describes a 2,250-foot, 16-inch water main extension along Route 28, utilities jacked under the railroad crossing, a commercial access road, and replacement of the existing passive railroad crossing with modern warning signals and automated gates. The listing names Middleborough Logistics Park and SEMASS as potential beneficiaries of the water connection.

By July 2025 the Town Manager’s Report described the same project as one that “now consists solely of the design and construction of a water main extension.” The report gives no reason for the change in scope, and the petition flags the narrowing without explaining it.

The second thread is state rail money. Sen. Ryan C. Fattman wrote the Board on Sept. 22 that TransloadX “has received substantial state funding to develop a transload facility on property located in my district,” and that he is “working to determine whether the company has satisfied all requirements associated with state grant funding.”

“To date, I have not yet been able to obtain complete responses to several outstanding questions regarding their compliance and progress.”

Fattman represents the Worcester and Hampden district. His letter does not identify which facility he means, and Framingham sits outside his district.

What is on the land

By the state’s own figures, the two phases combined would alter 85.5 acres, create 70.5 acres of impervious surface, alter 37,430 square feet of bordering vegetated wetland and 29,940 square feet of riverfront area. Phase 1 alone would alter 53.1 acres and generate about 1,586 vehicle trips a day, including 556 truck trips.

The entire site is mapped as priority habitat for the Eastern box turtle, a state-listed species of special concern. The state’s Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program has determined the project would cause a prohibited “take” of the species, requiring conservation of roughly 137.82 acres of habitat. The site lies within five miles of six environmental justice populations.

The Buzzards Bay Coalition owns more than 2,000 acres immediately south and west of the site in its Sippican Headwaters Reserve. The property sits at the top of the Sippican River watershed, a primary freshwater input to Buzzards Bay. In a Sept. 24 letter to the Conservation Commission, copied to the Middleborough and Rochester select boards, the organization asked the commission to deny the project outright.

“The impacts of this project would be substantial, resulting in the degradation of several critical natural resources,” wrote Julia Meskis, the organization’s vice president for clean water advocacy.

Questions the record does not answer

Several things remain unresolved in the public file.

Who would operate the spur. CSX says the site is operated by TransloadX. The state environmental filings name no carrier at all. Those two statements have not been reconciled anywhere in the record.

Whether preemption would be claimed here. No filing by TransloadX or South Coast Logistics Park in the Middleborough proceedings asserts federal preemption. The Coalition’s case rests on what the company would be positioned to argue, not on an argument it has made.

Why the MassWorks scope changed. The 2024 award describes a road, a railroad crossing upgrade and a water main. The July 2025 town report describes a water main alone.

What happened in Framingham after Oct. 9. The petition reports no appeal and no permit application as of that date. The compliance deadline falls Oct. 29.

What happens next

The Conservation Commission’s review continues on its own schedule, on the record in front of it. The state’s required supplemental final environmental impact report has not been filed.

The federal exemption remains postponed. The Board’s case status page, updated Oct. 16, lists the next expected action in Docket FD 36909 for this month. The Coalition has asked the Board to reject the notice outright, revoke the exemption, or at minimum require the company to produce evidence of genuine common-carrier service, meaning identified customers, traffic or a service plan, before any authority takes effect.

Nothing the Board does binds Middleborough’s commission. The filing does sharpen a question that has sat underneath this project since the first hearing notice. The commission has been weighing whether a warehouse meets the wetlands rules, while a filing in Washington argues the applicant’s affiliates are assembling the legal standing to say those rules do not reach the property at all.

This account is drawn from the Community Land and Water Coalition’s Oct. 9, 2026 petition in Surface Transportation Board Docket No. FD 36909 and its exhibits, including Massachusetts Secretary of State corporate records, CSX’s Massachusetts fact sheet and April 24, 2025 Select Site announcement, Framingham’s Sept. 29, 2026 cease-and-desist order, the state’s March 17, 2025 MEPA certificate and Middleborough’s February 2025 comments on it, the Buzzards Bay Coalition’s Sept. 24, 2026 letter, the 2024 MassWorks award listing, the July 2025 Town Manager’s Report, and Sen. Fattman’s Sept. 22, 2026 letter. The petition is an advocacy filing by a party opposed to the project, and its characterizations of the Superior Court rulings are the Coalition’s own. TransloadX Railroad Company is represented before the Board by attorney Thomas W. Wilcox of Washington, D.C. The company has not filed a response to the petition.

Barrella serves on the Middleborough Finance Committee and the Town Manager Search Committee. Neither body has a role in the Conservation Commission’s review of this project or in the proceeding before the Surface Transportation Board. The Finance Committee does review the town budget, which carries the MassWorks water main project described above.