A New Westminster man is urging the city to take action to eliminate the storage and staging of hazardous and explosive goods in the Quayside rail yard.
Brian Allen, chair of the Quayside Community Board’s rail noise committee, believes the city’s newly formed citizen advisory panel is a perfect place to address the issue with rail companies. The panel, which includes representatives from the rail companies operating in New Westminster, city officials and residents, will meet quarterly to discuss a variety of issues.
“My hope is the city really takes leadership on this issue, that they move it forward,” he told The Record. “I know that ultimately the city has no authority to tell the rail companies what to do because it is federally regulated lands.”
If the city is unsuccessful in making headway with the railways through the panel, Allen said it could appeal to the members of Parliament and federal minister of transportation.
“This is a safety issue,” he added.
The issue of storage and staging of hazardous, toxic and explosive goods hit home after the July 6 tragedy in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, when a runaway train rolled down a steep slope into town, derailed and exploded, leaving 47 dead and ravaging the downtown area.
“Given the recent events in Lac-Megantic, having highly flammable or explosive or toxic substances in close proximity to high-density residential areas is not a good thing,” he said. “As a matter of fact, in the United States, the department of transport after 9/11 put rules in place where toxic goods, explosive substances and hazardous materials could not be left in unsupervised rail yards. They have to be stored outside of city limits. … The only place that you can have hazardous substances in the U.S. is either outside the city limits or within a secured facility within city limits. They cannot be parked or stored anywhere near residential areas.”
While Allen isn’t sure whether those restrictions have been scaled back in the years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, he said it serves as a reminder of the need to ensure the items are safely stored.
“Absolutely not,” he said when asked if the yard adjacent to the Quay was a secured facility. “There is a four-foot high chain link fence with holes in it all over the place, and a couple of concrete blocks where people can hop over there. Often they park crude oil containers right beside the strata buildings there.”
Following the Quebec tragedy, Coun. Chuck Puchmayr told The Record that goods more dangerous than crude oil pass through New Westminster, including chlorine gas, sulpheric acid, hydrogen peroxide and propane. Because those goods have been coming through the city since the advent of the tanker car, and will continue to pass through the city, he said it’s important to consider the safety of those items and response plans in place if an incident ever occurred involving trains carrying hazardous materials.
Puchmayr, a member of the citizens advisory panel and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities railway committee’s dispute resolution committee, said the newly formed community panel will discuss issues such as infrastructure improvements, planned developments, pedestrians and road crossings, train whistles, and community and safety concerns.
Allen said a situation like Lac-Megantic isn’t as much of a concern locally as the Quay is on flat terrain, but lessons should be learned from that tragedy. He also cited a terror plot that was being planned by individuals wanting to blow up the legislature in Victoria with pressure cooker bombs on Canada Day.
“What are the chances of something like that ever happening? Small, but why should we take the chance, especially when they have a rail yard up in Coquitlam which is bounded by the TransCanada and United Boulevard?” he said. “It is totally an industrial area and would be a perfect place for an interlink point like that and for the storage of hazardous and flammable materials.”
Relocating the interlink point to the industrial area in Coquitlam would also address many of the noise issues that have been raised by Quayside residents for years.
“It is a perfectly viable option that should seriously be looked at as being a proper location,” he said.
According to Allen, there are often dozens of tanker cars carrying hazardous goods that are left unattended in they Quay rail yard for hours or days at a time. He understands that rail companies will continue to operate in New Westminster, but believes they must take action to address the inappropriate storage of hazardous materials in close proximity to a high-density residential area.
Allen wrote to mayor and council urging the city to address the issue through the citizen advisory panel. Mayor Wayne Wright and Coun. Lorrie Williams both responded to Allen’s letter and told him the city will look into the matter.
“The Quayside board has really worked hard to deal with this, with the limited knowledge and resources we have,” Allen said about rail noise. “We are really looking to the city to man up on items like hazardous goods, and really try and drive that through because that is really a political one. There is no mechanism for a private individual to address those kinds of things. There was one for noise through the Canada Transportation Agency. That is still ongoing at this point. The hazardous materials, that is really a federal political decision for the safety of the communities that they have to address.”
The Quayside Community Board has been working since 2008 to seek relief from nighttime train noise in the rail yard adjacent to their neighbourhood. A mediated settlement with the rail companies sought to reduce, and ultimately eliminate the unreasonable noise and vibrations being generated by nighttime operations – but the railways didn’t honour it.
Earlier this month, the Canadian Transportation Agency published a decision following a request from the Quayside board that the agency enforce the settlement agreement reached as a result of a mediation between the board and the Canadian National Railway Company, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, the BNSF Railway Company, the Southern Railway of British Columbia and the City of New Westminster.
While the agency found the railways had met their obligations with respect to some aspects of the agreement reached during mediation, it also concluded the federal railway companies had not established that they fulfilled their obligation under other portions of the agreement.
“Ideally I would like to have seen them just rule the rail yard is shut down in the evening and relocate the interlink… What they have done is put the burden on both sides,” Allen said. “We have to make it work. There are tools and mechanisms in place to address this issue. It will take time.”
Allen couldn’t speak to the specifics of the agreement, which is restricted by a confidentiality agreement. In addition to a public report from the agency, the parties involved received a separate letter setting out more detailed reason for the decision and the related agencies order requiring the federal railway companies to take remedial action to fulfill their obligations under certain clauses of the original mediated agreement.
Where the matter goes from here depends on the rail companies, said Allen, as they can appeal the Canadian Transportation Agency decision.
“I have always been of the mindset to work with them to reason with them. What’s ended up happening is the rail companies are totally inflexible,” he said. “They don’t want to incur any cost or change any process unless they’re mandated to do so. It’s unfortunate but I can also understand their position. They are out there to maximize profits and maximize shareholder returns.”
