Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Frustrated anglers, locals, confront CN at Squamish open house

Environment minister says CN will pay costs and may face fines.

Almost 200 community members put Canadian National Railway and other representatives in the hot seat last week, questioning why there is still no recovery plan to clean up the Cheakamus River six months after a caustic river spill killed an estimated half million fish.

"What I see is they’re doing a lot of work on what has happened and what the impact was," said Vancouver businessman and angler Rod Hamilton, "[But] I don’t have a sense of what they’re doing and what they’re doing to get the Cheakamus River back to what it was."

CN hosted the open house with steering committee representatives at the Squamish Adventure Centre on Feb. 8 to answer questions from the public about rehabilitation plans for the river. The half-dozen committee members on hand to explain the dozen poster displays and hand out a draft proposal were peppered with questions by anglers, businessmen, environmentalists, and locals concerned about slow recovery plan progress.

"I’d like to see results and a plan of action," said Linda Dupuis, a Squamish ecologist. "There should be an action plan addressing the ecosystem, but I don’t see anything about the riparian zone."

On Aug. 5, nine cars of a CN train derailed in the Cheakamus River canyon, north of Squamish. One of the tanker cars broke open, spilling more than 41,000 litres of caustic soda into the Cheakamus River. Fish suffered burns and suffocated along an 18-kilometre stretch of the river by sodium hydroxide, a chemical akin to oven cleaner. Seven species of fish were affected, with 95 per cent of Steelhead over three brood years killed.

Squamish resident Allen Lewis had gone swimming with two nieces and their father in the river on the morning of the spill and suffered burns to his feet as a result. But he came to the open house to see what rehabilitation plans are being drafted for the river and what is being done to make sure another accident like this doesn’t happen again.

"I’d like them to get on it, so we can fish again," Lewis said. "They need some cement boundaries, like the highway, so that if the trains wipe out again... there’s some form of safety so they’re not going into the river."

River recovery could take up to 50 years, according to ministry of environment findings, the Vancouver Sun reported last week.

"Vitually all free swimming fish occupying the Cheakamus River at the time of the spill were killed," the report said, estimating that as many as 500,000 fish were killed. Assessment of the CN Rail Caustic Soda Spill, August 5, 2005 on the Fish Populations of the Cheakamus River was co-authored by federal and private-sector biologists and by Greg Wilson, a ministry of environment biologist in attendance at the open house.

Wilson said the restoration steering committee formed at CN’s bequest last fall does not yet have a timeline for a rehabilitation plan. The Cheakamus Ecosystem Restoration Steering Committee responsible for drafting a recovery plan is made up of six stakeholders, including CN and Triton Environmental Consulting, B.C. Ministry of Environment, District of Squamish, Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Squamish Nation.

"We’ve got to come up with something that increases the natural rate of recovery, whether that be habitat restoration or fish culture work," Wilson said. The biologist also said the August spill is the largest he’d ever seen and could be the largest in B.C. history.

Insiders claim CN is willing to respond quickly with hatchery funding but provincial ministry of environment staffers are dragging their feet, debating from which hatcheries fish culture should be harvested.

Environment Minister Barry Penner says ministry biologists are working as quickly as they can under the circumstances.

"It’s not just a matter of scooping some eggs up from one stream and plunking them into the Cheakamus," Penner said in a telephone interview. "Given that we’re looking at a possible 50-year recovery period, it’s important efforts be well thought out.

"There’s nothing worse than a short-term plan or reaction that has long-term consequences."

Penner said the ministry has sent CN an interim bill for $60,000 for ministry costs in the first days after the spill. Not only could the railway face fines up to $1 million but CN will be held financially responsible for clean up costs "for the kind of million dollars to which you can add ‘s’."

Local fisherman and former hatchery worker Randy Marchant confronted federal fisheries staffer Matt Foy about restocking plans and said action needs to be taken immediately to harvest returning brood steelhead stock. "They need to start now, they almost had to start yesterday," he said.

Environmentalists supported local anglers in their demands for action.

"If they do not start gathering brood stock later this month we’ll be showing a barren river by the time Olympic folks come here [in 2010]," said Anthony Toth, executive director of B.C. Wildlife Federation.

Dave Brown of the Whistler Angling Club echoed that opinion.

"Do we want to have people coming up the highway looking at our river and saying ‘well it doesn’t have any fish left in it you know?’"

Squamish mayor Ian Sutherland also expressed concern about the need to rehabilitate the river in the next four years.

"We’re going to push CN and others to move this forward as quickly as possible." Sutherland said. "We want to make sure that by 2010 we have as healthy a river system possible available to people and a positive image for the community."

Squamish business owner Rios Sdrakas, whose Rivers Edge Fishing store came close to shutting down last fall after the spill dried up business, was upset with the open house format.

"So far it’s propaganda, there really is no concrete plan. There’s still nothing and it’s six months later," he said.

Sdrakas said his shop came within one day of closing after the river was closed to angling.

"We couldn’t go on one more day with a river closure that was two months long," Sdrakas said. "It really hurt us especially because it was that time of year when the salmon were running."

Mayor Sutherland intends to make sure voices like Sdrakas get heard.

"No one can or should say that CN doesn’t have a responsibility to fairly compensate River’s Edge — that should be a priority."

Randall Lewis, land management coordinator with the Squamish Nation, said his people complied with fishing closures on the river last fall. "So that means they didn’t have fish in their freezer for that winter."

Squamish Nation has been investigating river conditions and Lewis pegged $25 million in clean-up costs as "conservative," because it doesn’t take into consideration rights and entitlements.

Lewis noted that CN’s parent company paid US$38 million after a spill near Sacramento, CA in a river ecologically simpler than the Cheakamus.

CN representative Graham Dallas could not comment on estimates. "Fishery stocking is somewhat of an exact science. You don’t really know until you’re well into the program, but we’re here for the long term."

Earlier in the day CN had announced it would fund a $1.25 million salmon recovery project in the Squamish River watershed, of which the Cheakamus is part.