VANCOUVER -- It may be peak season for sport fishers angling for pink salmon and steelhead trout, but Whistler guide Brian Niska isn't able to take his clients to prime waters.

The B.C. Ministry of Environment ordered the Mamquam, Cheakamus and a portion of the Squamish River closed to fishing on Friday until the end of September so that salmon can recover from the damage wrought when a Canadian National Railways car dumped about 40,000 litres of caustic soda in the Cheakamus ten days ago.

Mr. Niska's company, Whistler Flyfishing, usually takes tourists on four trips a day. Now, he's down to two trips -- a loss, he said, of about $900 a day during the most important time for the seasonal industry.

"The worst thing is what [the spill] did to the river, but this is an expensive thing, and it's timed really badly," he said.

About 90 per cent of the fish in the Cheakamus River suffocated when the caustic soda, or sodium hydroxide, spilled into the water. Residents were shocked to find dead fish piling up on the shores; some people said they didn't even hear about the derailment and spill until hours after it happened.

Although all age classes and species of fish and many invertebrates were killed, a greater proportion of pink salmon and steelhead were affected, said Kevin Kish, another guide who operates out of Whistler.

"We haven't seen numbers like this," he said.

"It's devastating to see this happen. The full repercussions of what's happened won't be realized until next year, but it was indiscriminate.

"At least it's not a bunch of oil -- it's gone, it's been flushed," he said, referring to the CN spill that dumped 500,000 litres of oil into Lake Wabamun, about 65 kilometres west of Edmonton. That spill included up to 90,000 litres of a potential carcinogen.

Sonja Lebans, a Squamish district councillor, said tourists avoiding the area because of concerns about the spill need to know that the clean-up process is nearly complete.

"It does turn people away, there is no doubt; it has a huge impact," she said.

"But people were splashing in the river, and the rafters are back on the water.

"We're welcoming people back to the outdoor recreation capital of Canada."

The railcar, which still contained about 10,000 litres of solid sodium hydroxide, was pulled from the banks of the river on Friday.

Workers are still spraying the rocks around the Cheakamus with acetic acid so that when the river rises, sodium hydroxide left on the banks will not suffocate the remaining fish.

CN will pay for the costs of the cleanup, said company spokesman Graham Dallas, and has set up a phone number that residents and businesses can call to make claims.

The company will also meet with the community in September to discuss how it handled the emergency response.

"We take responsibility for this derailment, and we'll do everything we can to make people whole," Mr. Dallas said.

The track was ruled out as a possible cause of the derailment.

Depending on the results of the investigations into the accident, CN could be liable for the derailment under the Environmental Management Act, according to B.C. Environment Minister Barry Penner.

The Act provides for possible imprisonment and fines of more than $1-million.

CN's accident ratio, measured by number of accidents per million train miles, has increased by 19 per cent since last year.

© The Globe and Mail 2005