Curtis Bay residents are suing CSX following explosion at coal facility

For Ray Conaway, it started when he was a child. Spending time in Curtis Bay, he’d notice an acrid smell and ask his mother what it was. “‘Something not good for us,’” he said his mother would reply. Conaway believes the smell he remembers was almost certainly tied to the heavy industry there — including the coal terminal operated by CSX Transportation along the water. Now 27, Conaway is one of the co-presidents of the community association in Curtis Bay, in South Baltimore. He lives about four blocks away from the CSX coal facility, where an explosion in December 2021 rattled houses, broke windows and sent a plume of coal dust into the air and neighborhood.