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Sunday, Aug 07, 2005

CN says faulty track may have caused Wabamun derailment

WABAMUN, Alta. (CP) - Canadian National officials are looking at a faulty section of track as the possible cause of a train derailment that spilled thousands of litres of oil into Lake Wabamun, a spokesman said Sunday.
Damaged railway track is being collected from the site of Wednesday's derailment and analyzed by CN before being sent to the federal Transportation Safety Board for laboratory examination.

Jim Feeny said the company electronically inspects its track four times a year, and this section last had such an inspection in May. He said the Transportation Safety Board's investigators will make the final ruling on the cause.

"We're saying there may have been a specific instance of a track problem that may be related to this derailment," he said Sunday before a scheduled noon meeting with area residents to update them on cleanup and containment efforts at the lake, about 65 kilometres west of Edmonton. "But the final nature of it has to be determined."

Forty-five of 140 cars left the tracks. Some contained bunker C fuel oil, used in liquid asphalt and to power barges and ships. Fifteen of those cars, as well as a car full of lubricating oil, began to leak into the lake and surrounding shoreline.

Alberta Environment spokesman Brad Ledig said Sunday CN has reported to government that 734,000 litres of the fuel oil is estimated to have spilled from the damaged rail cars.

Feeny said the track in this area had been physically inspected, which the company does four times a week, a day before the derailment. The company's electronic inspection machinery runs over the track every three months.

Meanwhile, more equipment arrived this weekend, including heavy-duty containment booms designed to contain the oil slick and keep it from shifting to unharmed areas. Feeny said the priority is to get the booms in the water because the oil still hadn't been fully contained.

Teams were on the beach and in boats continuing the cleanup. Skimmers on the water were removing oil from the surface, while vacuum trucks were operating on the beaches.

Ledig said the company reported Saturday it had removed 171,000 litres of material from the ground and the lake, but it hadn't analyzed how much of that is water and how much is the spilled fuel oil.

"They're vacuuming it off the water," Ledig said. "It's impossible to just take the product."

He said Alberta Environment is pushing CN to clean up the site of the derailment to make sure no more oil leaks into the lake, but the company was having problems reaching all the damaged rail cars.

At the emergency centre at the Wabamun arena, 230 oil-covered birds and animals were brought in by volunteers and Alberta Sustainable Resource Development officials who were scouring the shoreline for wildlife. CN brought in experts from California to advise on cleaning up and rehabilitating wildlife caught in the spill.

On Friday the province issued an environmental protection order forcing CN to do everything necessary to clean up the spill and to report its progress to the province and the public. Failure to comply could result in fines or other penalties.

The company has been holding closed-door meetings each day with a group of community representatives to update them and hear their concerns. Public meetings have been held over the weekend, and Feeny said they'll evaluate whether the open meetings should continue.

Dozens showed up to Sunday's noon meeting, but it wasn't as tense and angry as other recent meetings, said Don Goss, who owns a cabin at Sherwin Beach.

Residents want the company to contain the slick on the water soon so they can turn their attention to cleanup. Goss said people at the meeting asked why trains speed through the area when the tracks are so close to the lake.

"We're hoping all this will be examined in the future," he said.

But for now knowing a suspected cause of the crash isn't as important as seeing the spill cleaned up, he said.

"Our primary focus has to be containment and cleanup now. We're watching our lake under sheets of oil."

Area property owners asked CN this weekend to pay for outside experts to represent them at the daily meetings, and the company agreed.

Many cabin owners spend summer holidays on the lake but have to return to work so they can't keep up their campaign to pressure the company to clean up. On Friday residents blocked the rail line's tracks through the village of Wabamun to express their frustration.

Goss said residents also hope to have a media relations firm hired Monday to give their perspective to the public on the cleanup of the lake.

CN has begun posting daily information bulletins on its website at www.cn.ca/news, as part of the order from Alberta Environment.

© The Canadian Press, 2005