
The Cheakamus River derailment occurred on August 5, 2005, when nine cars that were from a
Canadian National Railway
The Canadian National Railway Company () is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States.
CN is Canada's largest railway, in terms of both revenue a ...
freight train derailed and crashed into the
Cheakamus River
The Cheakamus River (pron. CHEEK-a-mus) is a tributary of the Squamish River, beginning at the terminus of McBride Glacier on Mount Sir Richard in Garibaldi Provincial Park upstream from Cheakamus Lake on the southeastern outskirts of the res ...
in
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...
. The cars contained approximately 40,000 litres of
caustic soda
Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye and caustic soda, is an inorganic compound with the formula . It is a white solid ionic compound consisting of sodium cations and hydroxide anions .
Sodium hydroxide is a highly corrosive base and alkali t ...
(sodium hydroxide), which entered the river, killing more than 500,000 fish from 10 different species, including
chinook salmon
The Chinook salmon (''Oncorhynchus tshawytscha'') is the largest and most valuable species of Oncorhynchus, Pacific salmon. Its common name is derived from the Chinookan peoples. Other vernacular names for the species include king salmon, quinn ...
,
coho salmon
The coho salmon (''Oncorhynchus kisutch;'' Karuk: achvuun) is a species of anadromous fish in the salmon family (biology), family and one of the five Pacific salmon species. Coho salmon are also known as silver salmon (or "silvers") and is often ...
,
pink salmon
Pink salmon or humpback salmon (''Oncorhynchus gorbuscha'') is a species of euryhaline ray-finned fish in the family Salmonidae. It is the type species of the genus ''Oncorhynchus'' (Pacific salmon), and is the smallest and most abundant of t ...
, and
rainbow trout
The rainbow trout (''Oncorhynchus mykiss'') is a species of trout native to cold-water tributary, tributaries of the Pacific Ocean in North America and Asia. The steelhead (sometimes called steelhead trout) is an Fish migration#Classification, ...
, both freshwater and ocean-dwelling. Juvenile rainbow trout were the most affected at a mortality rate of 90% and it was also estimated that the adult chinook salmon mortality rate reached 50%.
On November 5, 2005, the federal transport minister,
Jean Lapierre
Jean-Charles Lapierre (May 7, 1956 – March 29, 2016) was a Canadian politician and television and radio broadcaster. After retiring from the government in 2007, he served as a political analyst in a variety of venues.
He was Paul Martin's Q ...
, ordered CN to limit the number of cars of its conventional trains travelling in the area of the derailment between
Squamish and
Clinton to 80 cars in response to the derailment; the train involved had 144 cars. In 2007, an investigation report from the
Transportation Safety Board of Canada
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB, ), officially the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board () is the agency of the Government of Canada responsible for advancing transportation safety in Canada. It is acc ...
cited safety issues regarding operation of the train, such as not having the safest technology and improper training of the crew in how to respond to the various safety alarms. Additionally, they reported that the track had no contributing factors to the accident.
The report said that the train was going uphill when nine cars fell from a bridge into the Cheakamus River.
Transport Canada
Transport Canada () is the Ministry (government department), department within the Government of Canada responsible for developing regulations, Policy, policies and Public services, services of road, rail, marine and air Transport in Canada, tra ...
limited horsepower and tonnage after the accident, and CN faced federal and provincial charges. In 2006, it was estimated that it would take approximately a decade for the river to completely recover from the derailment. Attempts at restoration began by trying to introduce 20,000 juvenile
steelhead salmon that would have been hatchery raised from 40 wild adult steelhead salmon. In 2010, CN pleaded guilty to one federal charge under the Federal Fisheries Act and had to pay $350,000 towards conservation efforts and an additional $400,000 as a penalty for pleading guilty to the charge.
The derailment cost CN at least $7 million.
Sodium hydroxide effects in aquatic environments
Sodium hydroxide
Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye and caustic soda, is an inorganic compound with the formula . It is a white solid ionic compound consisting of sodium cations and hydroxide anions .
Sodium hydroxide is a highly corrosive base (chemistry), ...
(NaOH) has the potential to be a dangerous chemical in aquatic environments due to it raising the
pH level of the water. At low concentrations, NaOH will be neutralized by other chemicals in the water, such as acids and dissolved
carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...
(). Also, NaOH does not bioaccumulate in the aquatic organisms as it is dissolved in the water and has a negative
octanol-water partition coefficient
The ''n''-octanol-water partition coefficient, ''K''ow is a partition coefficient for the two-phase system consisting of ''n''-octanol and water. ''K''ow is also frequently referred to by the symbol P, especially in the English literature. It is a ...
. The
median lethal dose
In toxicology, the median lethal dose, LD50 (abbreviation for " lethal dose, 50%"), LC50 (lethal concentration, 50%) or LCt50 is a toxic unit that measures the lethal dose of a given substance. The value of LD50 for a substance is the dose re ...
(LC) concentrations for aquatic organisms for NaOH range between 33 and 189 mg/L. The pH scale is a measure of the concentration of free hydrogen ions in the water. Extremely high pH will harm fish, specifically juveniles, by removing their slimy coats and drying out their skin, eyes and gills. Consequently, raising the pH of an aquatic environment can directly increase the toxicity of other chemicals, such as
ammonia
Ammonia is an inorganic chemical compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the chemical formula, formula . A Binary compounds of hydrogen, stable binary hydride and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinctive pu ...
().
This is because in basic solutions (), becomes more prevalent than
ammonium
Ammonium is a modified form of ammonia that has an extra hydrogen atom. It is a positively charged (cationic) polyatomic ion, molecular ion with the chemical formula or . It is formed by the protonation, addition of a proton (a hydrogen nucleu ...
(), and it is dangerous to aquatic life. When pH exceeds 9, concentrations are over 100 times higher than below pH of 9.
Ultimately, high pH can lead to death of organisms in aquatic environments and directly reduce biodiversity in these environments.
If not caused by man-made industries or accidents, high pH surges can occur naturally and may be observed when algal blooms occur, otherwise they are virtually impossible to observe without directly measuring the pH of the water.
See also
*
List of rail accidents in Canada
Worst railway accidents
Other major railway accidents
See also
*List of deadliest Canadian traffic accidents
*List of disasters in Canada
Footnotes
References
*
External links
*
{{Railway accidents and incidents in Canada
Lists o ...
References
External links
Government of British Columbia Environmental Emergency Management Program report of the incident
{{Railway accidents and incidents in Canada
Environmental disasters in Canada
Disasters in British Columbia
2005 in British Columbia
2005 in the environment
Railway accidents in 2005
Derailments in Canada
Accidents and incidents involving Canadian National Railway
Sea-to-Sky Corridor
August 2005 in Canada