Nurdles are everywhere. Never heard of them? They are the raw form of plastic resin that’s melted and molded into everything from soda bottles to clothing fabrics, from food packaging to artificial Christmas trees.
However, two local environmental groups say a frightening amount of the pellets skip the useful product stage and are turning up on San Diego County beaches and in its lagoons, part of the rising tide of worldwide plastic pollution.
Nurdles are tiny, petroleum-based lumps about the size and shape of a lentil. Companies produce mass quantities of them and send them to manufacturers in trucks, shipping containers and railroad freight cars.
Volunteers have found “at least thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of the plastic particles alongside the tracks and in and around” North County lagoons and waterways, according to an official “notice of intent to sue” sent to the BNSF Railway Co. by the nonprofits San Diego Coastkeeper and the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation.
BNSF freight trains carry nurdles in hopper cars on the coastal railroad between the Port of San Diego and Los Angeles or other destinations throughout the western United States.
The tracks cross all the county’s coastal lagoons, from Del Mar to Camp Pendleton. The notice includes photographs of nurdles found in a drainage ditch along the tracks in Encinitas, just south of the Batiquitos Lagoon.
The lightweight nature of nurdles makes them easy to spill or leak, especially if a container is not tightly sealed, or when the material is loaded or unloaded, sometimes with a device that uses a hose like a leaf-blower. When set loose, the particles are easily spread by wind and water.
On the ground or floating in the water, the plastic pieces look like food such as fish eggs to birds and sea creatures. They can absorb or release toxic chemicals and metals such as DDT, PCBs and mercury. Some marine life will eat enough to kill them from starvation, organ damage or some other side effect.
Volunteers for the environmental groups documented evidence of spills on dozens of dates in 2023 and as recently as Feb. 12, 2024, the legal notice states.
North County Transit District, the owner and operator of the 60-mile rail corridor, assessed the spills and determined BNSF the responsible party and contacted the company, the notice states. BNSF then assumed responsibility for the cleanup.
BNSF is the official name for what, until a 2005 name change, was known as the Burlington, Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. It is the largest freight railway company in the United States, and has a history dating to 1849.
The company issued a statement on nurdles Saturday evening, which was too late to include in the initial version of this story.
“BNSF has been receiving reports of plastic pellets near railroad right-of-way,” said Lena Kent, BNSF’s executive director of public affairs. “We are taking these reports seriously, and we have sent personnel out to inspect the railroad right-of-way and try to locate/recover reported plastic pellets.
“Specifically, we inspected 14 miles of railroad right-of-way on both sides (totaling 28 miles) in January, February, and March, in addition to inspecting additional areas when advised of a reported issue,” Kent said. Where plastic pellets were identified, BNSF and its contractors have recovered some minor amounts of pellets but have not identified any specific sources.
“In several instances, we received reports of plastic pellets at specific locations,” she said. “If we located pellets, we removed what we found. However, often we cannot locate any plastic pellets at the reported locations.
“We continue to investigate the source of these pellets,” she said. “It’s important to note that BNSF and its contractors have focused inspections on the railroad right-of-way, but because plastic pellets have been found in random locations, including well outside the railroad right-of-way, it does not suggest an ongoing or systemic source from railroad operations.
“We encourage anyone who sees pellets, especially near the railroad right-of-way, to contact us with detailed location information, including GPS coordinates, if possible,” Kent said.
“That said, we would like to stress the importance of safety around railroad tracks, including not trespassing on NCTD property, which is dangerous and violates state and federal law,” she said.
Thomas Jones, manager of environmental remediation for BNSF, notified NCTD on Dec. 4, 2023, that a cleanup was tentatively scheduled for Dec. 5, 2023, the notice states, “However, CERF and Coastkeeper representatives continue to find nurdles along the tracks.”
The April 2 notice letter gave BNSF 60 days “to discuss effective remedies” before Coastkeeper and the foundation file a lawsuit for violation of the Clean Water Act.
“BNSF’s freight trains are routinely leaking and spilling toxic plastic nurdles into our precious coastal lagoons and Pacific Ocean, degrading our coastal waters, threatening sea turtles and other marine life, and directly contributing to our global plastic pollution crisis,” said Phillip Musegaas, executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper.
Musegaas said that so far BNSF had not responded to the notice and that the environmental groups intend to file their lawsuit soon after the 60 days expires June 3. He said he was not surprised by the company’s silence.
“Railroads are usually pretty imperious when it comes to responding to things,” he said. “We expect to hear something when we file our actual lawsuit.”
An NCTD official said the agency is monitoring BNSF’s remediation efforts, but offered no details and referred further questions to BNSF.
“NCTD contacted BNSF, which is responsible for material it may transport on the rail line, as soon as we were made aware of the concern,” said Colleen Windsor, the district’s director of marketing and communications.
Coastkeeper, Environmental Rights Coalition members and staff of Trash4Tokens, an international group leading trash cleanups, have documented nurdles on more than 30 separate occasions at numerous locations along the North County rail corridor, said representatives of the groups.
Discharging plastic nurdles into aquatic environments devastates food webs through animal consumption; threatens biodiversity through introducing invasive species; and harms water quality and ecosystem health by spreading toxic chemicals, their notice states.
Discharges of any pollutants, including nurdles, from BNSF trains degrades the nearby ocean and lagoons.
“For example, Agua Hedionda Lagoon empties into the Pacific Ocean at the edge of Carlsbad Beach State Park at Tamarack Avenue,” the notice states.
“Thus, trash deposited into Agua Hedionda is of special concern because it empties into a beach” used for recreation, it states.
At least a few nurdle lawsuits elsewhere have been successful.
The environmentalist groups Charleston Waterkeeper and the Coastal Conservation League received a $1 million settlement in 2021 for spills by Frontier Logistics, a South Carolina shipping facility that packaged nurdles received in rail shipments. The settlement money was to be used for water quality improvements in the Charleston Harbor watershed.
In 2022, a Texas private citizen’s lawsuit under the federal Clean Water Act for spills along the Gulf of Mexico ended with a $50 million settlement paid by Formosa Plastics, the world’s sixth-largest chemical maker, according to National Geographic magazine. The money went into a trust fund for local conservation projects, scientific research and sustainable fishing efforts.
Urgent action is needed in San Diego County, said Clare Swithenbank-Bowman of Trash4Tokens.
“With over 230,000 metric tons entering the world’s oceans annually, we can no longer afford to treat this as an isolated incident,” she said in a news release. “Let’s ensure that nurdles are transported and handled with the same care and diligence as hazardous substances.”
Nurdles and other plastics persist in the environment for decades, slowly breaking down into smaller pieces that can have toxic effects on wildlife and humans.
A 2020 report funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that worldwide only 9 percent of all plastic is recycled.
About 11 million metric tons of plastic waste enters the ocean every year, according to the report. That equals about a garbage truck full of plastic every minute.
