A River Never Sleeps

By Mark Hume, with Photography by Cory Hryhorczuk and Dave Harper

It didn’t take long to kill almost all the salmon, trout, char and other fish in the Cheakamus River, near Squamish on British Columbia’s west coast.

Within 36 hours of a CN Rail accident that sent a tanker car loaded with sodium hydroxide crashing down a steep bank, work crews had picked up 4,500 dead fish, ranging from big, 20-plus pound Chinook salmon, to tiny fry. But a lot more fish than that were killed, as a wave of 41,000 litres of sodium hydroxide swept downstream, wiping out almost everything it came into contact with.

At the mouth of the Cheakamus River that morning, August 5th, 2005, members of the Squamish First Nation who had gathered to fish the salmon run, which was just hitting its stride, reported seeing thousands of fish floating downstream. They wouldn’t learn until several hours later what had happened and it is just lucky that fishermen who were wading in the river, and kids, who were swimming in a nearby back channel, didn’t get chemical burns.

The accident that killed the Cheakamus took place at about 7:20 a.m, as CN train A47151-05, traveling at 14 mph, tried to negotiate a sharp curve coming off the bridge over the river. Nine cars, including the tank car, two empty wood chip gondolas and six centre beam flat cars, jumped the tracks and pitch-forked down a steep rocky bank.

The tank car cracked open and poured its contents unchecked into the swirling, cold waters of the Cheakamus.

Flowing downstream the wave of sodium hydroxide annihilated entire salmon runs – killing an estimated 85-90% of the fish in the river. The corpses of giant, broad shouldered Chinook, fresh in from the sea, drifted into the shallows. Dead bullheads tumbled along the bottom. Even in the back channels schools of small fry collected amidst the rocks, their white bellies up.

Fisheries workers and volunteers who were picking up dead fish reported finding fry with bulging eyes, and salmon with skin that looked like it had been scalded.

Randall Lewis, an environmental coordinator for the Squamish First Nation, said it’s impossible to know how many fish died in total that day, because so many of them were swept away.

“The main slug of dead fish was washed out to sea,” said Mr. Lewis. “I was down at the mouth of the Cheakamus that morning and there were thousands of fish washed out dead. There were pink salmon jumping out of the water onto the shore. . . . We found salmon fry with their eyes popped out. . . . There were two dead seals. . . . Their heads were burned and scarred by the caustic soda.”

Mr. Lewis said at first nobody knew what was wrong – it would be afternoon before they were informed of the chemical spill – and it is just lucky that no people were injured.

He said one native fisherman was so alarmed by seeing all the dead fish floating downstream that he ran to a back channel where his kids were playing and pulled them from the water.

“He’s got (chemical) burns around his ankles,” said Mr. Lewis. “It’s just lucky it wasn’t worse.”

The total damage done by the spill hadn’t been calculated at the time this was written – or at least the information hadn’t been made public yet. The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the provincial Environment Ministry and the Squamish First Nation were all assessing the situation, as was a consultant hired by CN Rail. A draft report was circulating, but DFO refused to release it for public viewing.

Whatever that report says it was clear very early on that most of the summer run of salmon to the Cheakamus was wiped out by the CN spill, as were resident bull trout, forage fish, salmon fry and four year classes of steelhead.

The big questions are: How will the river be restored? And who will pay for it?

In a transcript of a teleconference that took place a few days after the spill, The Pacific Streamkeepers Federation noted: “CN has agreed to be responsible for the spill and remediation.”

But just how much CN is willing to pay isn’t clear.

Shortly after the accident CN Rail donated $250,000 to the Pacific Salmon Foundation, and indicated it would make further donations in the future.

CN also agreed to fund Department of Fisheries work to the tune of $81,000 and B.C. Environment Minister Barry Penner said the province’s cleanup bill – an estimated $100,000 – would go to the railway.

That’s a far cry, however, from the $28 million CN (which posted a third quarter profit of $411 million in November) committed to cleaning up Lake Wabamun, in Alberta, which was heavily polluted by oil when a train derailed there in August.

Lake Wabamun is a wonderful and highly popular body of water, East of Edmonton, but its not a salmon river and a 2004 provincial Ministry of Environment report noted that its fishery had long been in decline.

“As a result of commercial fishing, sport overfishing, and destruction of fish habitat, walleye have disappeared from the lake. Few pike survive long enough to reach reproductive age. Lake whitefish have not successfully reproduced for several years,” stated the report, which also noted pollution problems on the lake, from fecal coliform and trace metals.

If CN is prepared to spend $28 million restoring an already damaged body of water, like Lake Wabamun, what should it be asked to put up for the recovery of an important salmon river like the Cheakamus?

So far only the Squamish First Nation appears to be pushing CN to make a significant contribution.

Mr. Lewis said CN should put up “millions of dollars” and he has suggested that if the rail company doesn’t, the Squamish First Nation is ready to go to court. Suing the province isn’t out of the question either, he said.

“We can take anyone to task and we will if we aren’t accommodated,” he was quoted as saying in The Whistler Question.

“We don’t know what will be the total cost of the spill,” CN spokesman Graham Dallas said. “Our goal is to get the river cleaned up and back into shape for the community and visitors.”

That contrasted, however, with a comment made by Dr. Tom Watson, Vice President of Triton Environmental Consultants, whose company was hired by CN to assess the damage and oversee the restoration work.

At a public meeting in September Mr. Watson referred to the incident as a “little blip,” according to a report in The Whistler Question.

And although the figure of 4,500 dead fish had already been posted by The Pacific Streamkeepers, Mr. Watson reportedly said, in response to a question, that he could not say how many fish died from the spill.

He did say: “The river is not dead.”

Not dead, maybe, but with generations of salmon and steelhead wiped out, and one year’s run absolutely devastated, it will be a long, costly battle before anyone can call the Cheakamus a healthy river again.

Meanwhile CN Rail has been ordered by Transport Canada to limit the length of their conventional trains to 80 cars while operating northbound between Squamish and Clinton, B.C. - a substantial drop from the 130 cars it was typically running.

That directive was issued on November 2004, after CN had recorded its third derailment in the Squamish area in three months. After the August spill into the Cheakamus, CN crashed two more trains, including derailing one only a few kms from where the tank car went into the river. In both cases, however, mostly empty cars were involved and no environmental damage was done.

Good thing too. The Cheakamus couldn’t take another hit.