Court fines CN $400K for Cheakamus spill

North Shore News

First time the company has been convicted under fisheries pollution laws

CN Rail has been fined $400,000 and ordered to pay most of that to fisheries habitat conservation projects after pleading guilty in North Vancouver provincial court Monday to a pollution charge under the federal Fisheries Act.

An estimated half million fish died in the Cheakamus River on Aug. 5, 2005 after a CN train more than 2,800 metres (9,300 feet) long derailed, rupturing a tank car and sending 45,000 litres of caustic soda into the river.

The guilty plea -- entered before provincial court Judge William Rodgers at the same time the company pleaded to further pollution offences in Alberta -- marks the first time the company has been convicted under fisheries pollution laws.

Crown counsel John Cliffe described the $400,000 fine as appropriate. "There's no doubt there's significant environmental harm here," said Cliffe.

As part of the deal worked out between Crown and defence lawyers, CN will also complete an environmental mapping project with government authorities identifying sensitive watercourses near CN rail lines.

Cliffe noted since the spill, the rail company has spent about $5.3 million on fish restoration projects in the Cheakamus River area.

What Cliffe described as a "stringline" derailment happened as the freight train with 144 cars and seven locomotives crossed a trestle bridge while climbing a steep grade between two curves north of Squamish.

While the engines at the front of the train were working, the two remote engines about two-thirds of the way back had been set up incorrectly in the company's North Vancouver yard and had automatically shut down. When the train started to lose speed, said Cliffe, the engineer -- who had been running three of the locomotives -- brought another engine at the front of the train on-line, cranking up the power pulling the train to more than 16,000 horsepower, in contravention of CN policies.

Cliffe said the main cause of the derailment was excessive force from the engines at the front of the train essentially pulling the cars off the track as it went around a curve.

One of the tank cars broke open and quickly released the corrosive substance into the Cheakamus River.

Cliffe said immediately after the derailment, "The waters of the Cheakamus River were measured to have a pH of 13.7." The caustic soda caused "rapid death" among steelhead, salmon and trout exposed to it in affected water.

The accident happened a year after the track formerly operated by BC Rail was sold to CN as part of a privatization deal.

In its own report issued in 2007, the Transportation Safety Board was highly critical of CN, stating the rail company "resumed operations of long trains in the extreme mountain environment of the Squamish subdivision without a formal risk assessment and without adequate consideration of the value of retaining and using local knowledge and experience in the operation of long distributed power trains."

Prior to the takeover by CN, BC Rail had run three shorter northbound trains a day on the Squamish line. When CN took over, the company decided to run one long northbound train a day, in order to cut costs.

Following three more derailments on the same line, Transport Canada set a maximum train length of 114 cars on the Squamish line.

A civil court case launched by the Squamish Nation following the spill claiming damages to band members' livelihoods, way of life and traditional use of the river is still before the courts.

CN was fined a further $1.4 million on Monday after pleading guilty to its role in another train derailment in August 2005 that sent 196,000 litres of oil spilling into Lake Wabamun, near Edmonton.

In the Alberta case, the company pleaded guilty to three pollution charges.

© North Shore News 2009