“Even if the City opts to support this increase, it must have the approval of at least 51% of accommodation property owners representing at least 51% of the rooms available.” .. it would be nice if that was how it was for property tax, utilities, etc for the average homeowner.

On tonight’s agenda is a report that discusses the safety of our drinking water – Well Protection Plan.

From the Safe Water Drinking Act: Public reporting
The public has the right to know the results of monitoring their water supply.
Dissemination of this information, a requirement for true public accountability for water management, has become the common practice in other jurisdictions.

The City fails to be transparent and accountable in reporting drinking water monitoring. Despite requests from residents, The City (unlike other communities) does not post the current and monthly TREATED water monitoring results on the website. If City of PG water is of the highest quality (City website), then show us.

Highlights from the report:

W605
PW605 is further away from the CN yard; however, the pump house sits within 100 m of the track and thus, could be vulnerable to damage from collisions. Up until recently the pumphouse has also stored a large volume of hydrofluorosilicic acid, used as a water fluoridation additive, which is extremely toxic even in low doses.”

“…there has been a public outcry for greater transparency regarding the types of materials which are being transported, especially in regards to dangerous goods. As a result, an announcement was made in January 2014 that starting in April 2014, rail companies would have to submit quarterly reports (every 90 days) summarizing ALL materials carried though municipalities (globalnews.ca, 2014). The City of Prince George issued formal requests to CN staff to receive these reports in February 2014.
However, upon meeting with a CN representative on July 14th, 2014, Radloff were informed that CN is under no obligation to report to municipalities as this information is already reported at a Federal level. The City was encouraged to request information from the Transportation Safety Board. Future discussions with CN or the TSB should clarify the scope of responsibilities for reporting under the new regulation.
One option which could be explored is an early warning/reporting system from CN to the City regarding
dangerous goods which will be passing through the CN Yard. Since rail cars are already individually equipped with GPS tracking (as is often used to track international shipments by sea), it may be possible that CN would know weeks or even months in advance about future dangerous good shipments.
The advantage of advanced notice is that, if a spill were to occur, these records could allow responders to immediately choose the course of action best suited to combat the particular contaminant in question. The obvious drawback of this measure is that public opinion may be quite negative if statistics as to the nature and frequency of these hazardous goods were to be released.
At the moment, CN is not open to this information being made public for security and propriety reasons.

anything Booze and any increase in taxes should be a shoe in.

Can this Council be Recalled??

CN will never share cargo information of any kind unless federal law is changed, requiring them to disclose this information upon request.

Responders to derailments must jump through the hoops of CN bureaucracy to get information even AFTER a derailment. That pretty much slows up any sort of response to leaking rail cars lying on the river bank.

But, our federal laws permit this.

metalman.

Firstly CN Rail gets a manifest and advance information on all trains destined to Prince George,. The latest would be when a train departed Jasper, or Smithers, and in some cases McBride and Endako BC.

So Railways always know what trains are coming and what Dangerous Goods are on what train and where they are located on the train.

If by chance there should be a derailment the Railways have their own emergency response teams, and of course would advise other people that need to be advised.

Railways work 7 days per week 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, so who would be best to have this information, and to use it?? Surely not someone at City Hall who get off work at 5pm and goes golfing.

The last thing you need is some politicians, or municipal workers, or others getting involved in how these types of situations should be handled. Railways have over 100 years experience.

Air cargo carriers have less experience than 100 years.

Can you provide a comparison of the cost of incidents per tonne-km or ton-miles of transported cargo per 10,000 units to see just how safe rail transport is compared to air transport? Then introduce comparable figures for trucking and even shipping by sea.

For instance, to carry one ton of cargo it takes one gallon of fuel to go:
By ship – 514 miles
By train – 202 miles
By truck – 59 miles

From the safety point of view, deaths per billion ton-miles
By train – 1.15
By truck – 0.84
By ship – 0.01

Data source = business.tenntom.org/why-use-the-waterway/shipping-comparisons

No air comparison is provided.

Notice that of the three transportation methods, based on deaths, railways, despite 100 years of experience, have the poorest safety record. That would be a good reason fro someone to get involved with improving the safety record of railways, especially when this info tells us that trucking is actually safer. Frankly, that is something I did not expect to see.

gopg2015

Lets not get carried away with comparisons between truck, rail, and air.

Firstly there is no way that you can transport the Dangerous Goods that you need to run industry in Canada (or the North American Continent) by air. Nor would it be tolerated by the citizens at large.

So forget Air. Secondly truck transportation is not able to handle the amount of tonnage that is is moving via rail, and if somehow it could, then of course the statistics for truck transportation deaths would go up because they would increase the number of trucks a million times over.

So the majority of Dangerous Goods are transported by Rail and for good reason. This is the safest form of transportation to move huge volumes of Dangerous Goods over long distances.

The statistics for moving one ton of cargo by ship has no bearing on anything because anything that is moving by ship ultimately (with a few exceptions) has to be unloaded, and then moved to destination via rail, or truck. As an example shipping containers from China to Prince Rupert would get you 514 miles per gallon, however you would then move it to the Eastern USA via rail which would be 202 miles per gallon of fuel, and then the container would be delivered from the rail yard to the customer (usually within a 500 mile radius) and you would be getting 59 miles to the gallon.

Soooooo. You cannot make any comparison, because for the most part this is a continuous movement. Ie; ship to rail to truck, or rail to truck, or rail to ship to truck, etc; etc;.

Air is not included because very little or no dangerous goods move by air.

Statistics for deaths per billion ton miles are basically useless, unless you can show that the deaths were caused by the various modes of transportation, or caused by citizens at large running into truck, trains, etc;

Railways, Municipalities, Regional Disricts, RCMP, Fire Departments, Pulp Mills, etc; all have some form of Emergency Response responsibilities, and they are in contact on a regular basis, and have programs in place to respond to derailments, or chemical spills etc;