CN Rail and the Risks to P.G.’s Water Supply
Prince George, B.C.- Three of the City of Prince George’s wells, from which the City pulls 95% of its water supply, lie between the Nechako River and a very active CN rail line and that means there is risk.The degree of risk depends on the incident.
Just yesterday, several flat deck cars jumped the rails on th east end of the rail bridge. There were no injuries and no contaminants, but the event was evident that derailments can and do happen.
The concerns are real, as more and more chemicals and products are moving by rail.
While each well is valued at about $6 million dollars, there is no price that can be placed on the value of the Nechako Aquifer.
A new report to City Council says some liquid contaminants could leach their way into the Nechako Aquifer in as quickly as 18 minutes.
“This report has to be problematic to CN” says Councillor Brian Skakun, “They are a community partner and they are running dangerous goods through our community.”
The report notes there are some things that can be done to reduce the risk .
The report makes several recommendations including:
- Impose the yard speed protocol along the length of track west of the CN yard to west of the wells. The Yard speed protocol calls for low speed ( 10-15 mph).
- Increased communication with CN
- Installation of remote well shut down at City Hall or Public Works ( if there was an incident access to the wells to manually shut them down may not be available)
- removal of grade level crossings
Councillor Albert Koehler liked the report, noting “This report has lit a bit of a fire under the bum of CN”.
Director of Public Works, Gina Layte-Liston says the City has already proposed that CN and the City form a working group to address the risks and the mitigation plan.
Comments
Just saying, but CN already has a 15 MPH speed limit in the yard. And movements must not go so fast that they cannot stop within half the range of vision, which is usually slower than 15 MPH.
I tried to get on the city’s website to find out how deep those wells are but for some reason, the site won’t come up.
Someone will have to explain very carefully to me, how a surface contaminant could reach the pumping source of a well that is supposedly hundreds of feet deep, through a constantly flowing water table, many feet of gravel, which is a great water purifier, layers of clay and rock, down to where the water is actually coming from, in eighteen minutes.
That seems to be assuming that local surface water is feeding the aquifer, which I don’t believe is true at all.
If it were true, then the wells would be contaminated all the time.
Gravel filters some substances but not others. For example, solvents such as benzene, toluene and xylene pass right through gravel. The risk of rail spills depends a lot on exactly what they are carrying both because some substances will reach the acquifer more rapidly and because some are dangerous in much smaller concentrations than others.
Good luck trying to get real co-operation or information out of CN. They operate under their own regulations and nobody else’s. Even when they are proven to be in the wrong, they insist they are right and walk away.
Case in point, the derailed/ruptured tanker car spilling flaming fuel into the Fraser River. They kept denying that ANY fuel made it into the river, even when the picture on the front page of the newspaper showed otherwise. The circumstances alone that led to that derailment showed that CN was operating in violation of their own code, yet nothing happened to them.
I truly believe that CN will do little or nothing to help mitigate the risks brought forth by the City… here’s to hoping that they prove me wrong.
I was in the well building under the old Cameron street bridge once and was told to imagine a large wagon wheel lying on its side about a hundred feet down . They said the water was some of the best anywhere in Canada.I don’t see contaminant’s getting to the source in 18 minutes
At 104 feet straight down, I have to agree with you.
“This report has to be problematic to CN” says Councillor Brian Skakun, “They are a community partner and they are running dangerous goods through our community.”
They’ve been here longer then the community haven’t they? He doesn’t want pipelines, he doesn’t want rail, what does he want other then the praise of the masses?
Did you not read what the new report says some? “some liquid contaminants could leach their way into the Nechako Aquifer in as quickly as 18 minutes”
You ask what does he want. It should be easy to figure that out. He wants to make sure that in case of an incident which that there is no contaminant that can get into the water supply. I bet you he also wants to make sure that it does not get in there in 30 minutes or 3 hours or 3 days.
Tell us that you do not see anything wrong with that. If you cannot tell us why, then tell us why you do not care about the safety of people in this city.
Drinking the Skakun koolaid I see.
He’s blaming CN for something that is entirely the fault of the city. The tracks have been there long before the city built the well. In all these years no one has figured out that may be an issue?
“I bet you he also wants to make sure that it does not get in there in 30 minutes or 3 hours or 3 days.”
I’ll bet you there’s not a politician out there who honestly gives a rat’s ass about you, me or their city. People enter politics for themselves. When you ran for council was it not just to stroke your ego?
Just another nonsensical dig at a person you do not like.
When the wells were built, what kind of cargoes were the trains carrying? Lumber, dry goods, machinery, grain, cattle and many other cargoes do not put the water supply at risk. It is only trains carrying certain kinds of chemicals that are a concern. Such cargoes are very likely a relatively recent development.
Creosote soaked ties have been around for a very long time. Those are the first things that would concern me if I was to put a well in next door.
Creosote would be an issue, but if a load of creosote-soaked ties is dumped next to the tracks, how fast is creosote going to leach out of the ties and into the acquifier? Not very fast, I suspect.
Is anyone ever going to change your mind? Of course not!! You are what you think, and that is how you will be judged along with everyone else, including me, no matter what one says.
From what you say, it appears that you must be in it for your ego. In fact, based on what you say every single person who dares to open their mouth and express a point of view that is different from another, such as posters on here, are in it for their ego.
Every single one wants to see their name in lights.
So, once we get beyond that, where does that leave us? In my mind it leaves us with the real issue, not the issue of ad hominem attacks, but the issues which matter. In this case, what is the danger of water being contaminated? Remember, before the railway was here, there was no railway and people were drinking natural water with whatever impurities that may have contained. Time did not start with the railways.
Connect Fort St James to Vanderhoof by rail and we wouldn’t have trains running through PG and up the Nechako.
No trains running through PG?
So you will truck the dangerous goods which go to PG industry, let alone the normal goods which go to and from PG and its industries?
No that is not what I would do. I would ship it all by rail. How do you think that will go when CN tries to replace their hundred year old bridge? Good luck with that one. This report to council states as much.
Trains would still pass through industrial PG, just not through the downtown and up the Nechako where our drinking water comes from. PG is a rail hub you know. We have rail lines through the BCR site south of town and the rail lines run out east of town as well as up across the Fraser to the pulp mills and refinery and on up to the Dease Lake line as well as up to the Peace country.
Council would do well for the city by taking this report and using it to pass a bylaw against dangerous goods by rail trough our downtown.
Maybe you should look at a map of where the rails run. Prince George is a rail hub.
Maybe you need to look at the map and see that having a dangerous goods route for rail traffic that avoids our water supply only adds 45km of track to the CN rail corridor to avoid downtown PG and the Fraser Nechako crossing with their hundred year old bridge.
It makes economic sense for CN as well as most of their dangerous goods traffic will come from north of Bear Lake and the Peace River hydro system and thus using the Dease Lake track to short cut to Fraser Lake cuts nearly a hundred kilometres of track distance for those goods.
For PG it protects our water supply and opens up the possibility of some light rail transit to Vanderhoof and points out west.
Now they are finally paying attention to this situation and how to reduce the possibility of a spill ever happening! Anything wrong with that? I do not think so.
Nothing wrong with that at all. Blaming it on CN instead of accepting that the city dropped the ball a very long time ago is wrong.
and your proposal is??? what move the city???
Move the rail yard.
Move the rail yard? so what does that do to your argument that the railway has a claim to eminent domain without compensation in this case?
You gave up or you are totally inconsistent with your original argument.
You are now drinking Skakun KoolAid!!
Who said anything about no compensation? I didn’t. My original argument was this is the city’s fault. If the city wants to solve the problem, they’ll have to foot the bill. Blaming CN doesn’t solve anything.
If some people put more effort into finding solutions instead of arbitrarily assigning blame, we as a society could truly progress.
metalman.
I think the solution is in front of our eyes. I believe the railyard is no longer suited to modern trains. Moving the railyard eastward (as one possibility) would provide them with enough space to shunt trains as required these days.
Then again, who knows, perhaps having more engines with shorter trains would provide more safety and more flexibility.
Move the rail yard to the city industrial lands out Salmon Valley and shunt the trains through the Dease Lake line out west to Fraser Lake.
That is the long term plan is it not. This is just setting the table is all…..
Does anyone posting here know what dangerous goods are actually handled West of Prince George that would threaten the subject wells??
Does anyone know the frequency of shipments.
Is anyone aware that there is considerably less dangerous goods handled West of Prince George to-day than in the past 20/30 years.
Is anyone aware that there has not been one dangerous goods incident, derailment, collision, or leak of product between Mile 0 and Mile 6.31 since the City built the first well in 1972.
The Railway has been running through Prince George since 1912. The City was established in 1915 and was named Prince George BC by the Railway.
The City built the wells between the Railway and the Nechako River, and must have been pretty sure that there was no significant danger to the water system, otherwise why would they build there.???
What we are dealing with here is sometimes referred to as a **Stalking Horse**
The definition of a stalking horse has evolved to mean anything that is put forward or proposed anonymously, or through a third party, to test the waters or mask the real plan.
So then the question is. What is the real plan??.
I have my own idea what the real plan is, however I will leave it to others at the moment to figure it out.
Real plan is obviously to move the rail yard north of the city to the city industrial land at Salmon Valley and close the hundred year old CN bridge. Shunt the west traffic through the Dease Lake line to west of Vanderhoof.
Where the water wells are located is irrelevant as a spill could occure anywhere in the area and still contaminate the aquifer. Having the wells located close to the river minimizes the impact on the water supply, but increases the risk of a dangerous goods spill like the one we had on the Fraser side a few years ago.
IMO this report is akin to a memo for CN to plan accordingly if they plan to ship oil or petroleum based products by rail in volume to the west coast. They have been served a weak waisted notice… But a notice none the less.
From the: Provincial Health Officer’s Annual Report 2000
Drinking Water Quality in British Columbia:
The Public Health Perspective
“The city of Prince George has been using groundwater as its
drinking water source since the 1960s. It relies on a series
of shallow, unconfined aquifers fed by water from the
Nechako River.
The river water replenishes the aquifers by seeping through
layers of soil, gravel and rock. This natural filtration process
removes many microbiological, physical and chemical
contaminants, leaving the water in the aquifers relatively
contaminant-free. The city then chlorinates the water from all
but one well before distributing it.
The shallow aquifers, however, are highly vulnerable to
surface contamination. Train tracks and a highway run over
top of the aquifers, and a diesel fuel spill in 1997 still has the
potential to contaminate one well. Nearby septic fields also
pose a potential risk.”
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