Canadian Pacific hit with violation notice after derailment in Maine
MONTREAL –
State authorities in Maine have hit Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. with a violation discover over fallout from its cleanup efforts after a freight prepare went off the tracks final month.
Officials despatched a discover of violation to the railway after heavy building tools deployed to entry the crash website prompted a “significant amount of sediment” to enter native waters in violation of a air pollution management regulation, in line with Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection.
“Culverts were crushed and dirt has been shifted in and around a number of streams as a result of heavy machinery using the forest management roads,” the division mentioned in a launch Friday.
Melanie Loyzim, the division’s commissioner, despatched a second letter instructing CPKC to implement erosion management measures “immediately.”
On April 15 a Canadian Pacific Kansas City prepare hit a observe washout in a wooded space close to Moosehead Lake in northwestern Maine, some 220 kilometres southeast of Quebec City, setting a number of vehicles ablaze.
CPKC mentioned final month that locomotives and 4 derailed lumber vehicles went up in flames, with crews utilizing booms — absorbent, tubelike obstacles — to comprise spilled diesel gas.
Cars carrying drums of ethanol and one other hazardous materials additionally skidded off the rails however didn’t catch fireplace, CPKC mentioned. State officers mentioned there isn’t any menace to public security.
Three crew members have been taken to a neighborhood hospital for non-life-threatening accidents and launched the identical day, the railway mentioned.
As of Friday, CPKC had about 60 emergency spill responders and environmental professionals on website to wash it up and monitor soil and floor water high quality, the state officers mentioned. Specialized railway tools arrived Thursday, set to be lined with plastic and loaded with oil-saturated supplies from the location.
“The remote, forested nature of the area combined with the spring thaw has made cleanup efforts challenging, including for the ingress and egress of people and equipment,” Canadian Pacific spokesman Patrick Waldron mentioned in an emailed assertion Tuesday.
“CPKC is committed to the restoration of the derailment area and full cleanup of the affected environment. CPKC crews are on the ground working in full co-operation with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, and other agencies, as we have since the derailment occurred.”
The rail line is similar one the place the deadly Lac-Megantic catastrophe unfolded about 90 kilometres additional west in 2013. Canadian Pacific didn’t personal the observe on the time.
The line — in CP Rail’s fingers till the mid-Nineties, and later dubbed the Central Maine & Quebec Railway — was in dire want of an improve when the corporate repurchased it from non-public fairness agency Fortress Investment Group in 2020.
“CP plans to invest as much as $90 million over the next three years to bring CMQ’s rail infrastructure up to Federal Railroad Administration Class 3 standards,” Canadian Pacific mentioned practically three years in the past.
Greg Gormick, who heads On Track Consulting, mentioned the accident might have been “much worse” given the route’s rugged topography.
Last week, Canadian Pacific informed Maine’s environmental safety division its response group had recovered practically 33,000 absorbent pads, 15,000-plus toes of absorbent growth and 12 cubic metres of fluid — oil, water and diesel — utilizing vacuum vans.
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed May 2, 2023.
