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The latest train derailment in Canada has put a Northern Ontario town on alert after 150,000 litres of deadly sulphuric acid spilled into a river in one of the most environmentally sensitive areas in the province.
Farmers in the town of Englehart, Ont., have been warned not to let their livestock drink from the Blanche River after 22 cars of an Ontario Northland train — including 15 carrying sulphuric acid — jumped the tracks about 215 kilometres north of North Bay.
“It could destroy our livelihood,” Englehart farmer Sally Reinertson said Sunday night. “We raise organic chickens and turkeys here and I live here because I want to have a healthy place for our children. So, for me, it’s huge and I feel like we have no control over this at all.”
For nearly two days, five of those cars steadily leaked 200 tonnes of sulphuric acid into the river about 10 kilometres north of Englehart, bringing the water’s pH (a measure of acidity) to dangerous levels, according to the Ministry of the Environment.
Details of Friday afternoon’s accident were only becoming available Sunday as more emergency crews arrived to the remote area to clean up.
The accident is reminiscent of another Ontario Northland derailment in March, 2000, that spilled 386,000 litres of sulphuric acid into the Temagami area, about an hour north of this site.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada concluded that poor track maintenance and Ontario Northland Railway’s use of untrained inspectors contributed to that 29-car derailment in which 144,000 litres got into the Martin Creek waterway.
It is also just the latest in a series of derailments that have had environmentally catastrophic impacts on several underpopulated regions of Canada, including a close call in January when a CN Rail train carrying four cars of sulphuric acid ran off the rails and crashed within metres of a home in Montmagny, Que. In August, 2005, an Alberta lake was polluted after 160,000 litres of oil leaked from the cars of a CN Rail derailment.
Beverly Martin, a spokeswoman for Ontario Northland, said that nearly 40 hours after the accident occurred, the leaks were finally contained by 10:30 a.m. yesterday when the cars were turned upright again. “As we get closer to the site, it’s possible that we could find there’s another car leaking, but at this point we feel we’ve contained all the leaks,” she said, adding the cause of the derailment was still under investigation.
Emergency personnel from the Ministry of the Environment and Transport Canada were on site all weekend monitoring the cleanup.
“Our hope is to reopen the track for Thursday. We’re working around the clock to clean up the area,” Ms. Martin said.
The spill forced the Timiskaming Health Unit to advise residents south of the spill that the river water should not be used even to water livestock, said Carol Gauthier, manager of inspection services for the health unit. Ms. Gauthier said the municipal water is not sourced from the Blanche River.
Meanwhile, Ontario Environment Ministry officials continue to take water samples and began adding lime upstream of the spill site on Saturday to neutralize the effects of the acid.
“This is a very significant spill,” spokesman John Steele said Sunday night. “Any amount of sulphuric acid represents a threat when it is introduced to a water course because it threatens the aquatic system. ... Anybody who consumes it will be in danger because of the fact that sulphuric acid has a burning component to it.”
No one has been injured, and Mr. Steele said there have been no reports of any fish deaths in the area.
But water samples taken at the site of the spill show pH levels of 2.67, which is highly acidic. Normally, water is neutral at about 7 on the scale, where 0 signifies extreme acidity and 14, alkalinity.
Although Mr. Steele did not know how far downstream the acid had travelled, Ms. Reinertson, who keeps 13 horses, was very concerned.
Ms. Reinertson’s farm is about 15 kilometres downstream of the spill site, and is on the shore of the Blanche River. The family gets its drinking water from a 45-metre-deep well on the farm.
Ms. Reinertson said it was only a matter of time until a train derailed near her home. The Ontario Northland train travels through the area six days a week, carrying 15 cars of sulphuric acid at a time. “It’s scary. We’re definitely seeing more and more derailments and, because of that, we’re going to have more and more environmental disasters in local areas that should never be touched by this kind of this thing.”
She said the river, which is about nine metres deep and 18 metres wide near her farm, is still mostly frozen, and she hopes that will slow the acid from travelling downstream.
Globe and Mail