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Articles
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| Train derailment further pollutes Anacostia River |
VOICE writes, "BY BEN WEINSTEIN
Retrieving wreckage from last week's Anacostia River train derailment could pose a greater environmental threat than the spilled coal itself, environmentalists and city officials said.
On Nov. 9, several freight cars crashed through an unstable bridge, dumping hundreds of tons of coal into the river. An official with the D.C. Department of the Environment said removing the relatively innocuous debris could stir up more dangerous, possibly carcinogenic industrial waste from the riverbed. CSX began cleaning the site last week, and the Environment Department will monitor water samples throughout the process."
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"This is just the latest problem with the Anacostia," said Hamid Karimi, deputy director of the Environment Department, adding that cleaning up
the spill could free the "skeletons in the closet."
District officials quickly said that aside from its adverse environmental impact, the accident also highlights inadequate rail safety and the city's vulnerability to hazardous material shipments.
In a news release, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a member of the House's Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said she's troubled by the degraded rail infrastructure and the "risk of catastrophic consequences from terrorism and from mishandling hazardous materials transported through an urban area."
CSX spokesperson Gary Sease said the company recognizes the District's security concerns and is looking to the federal government for practical, effective measures. "It's an enormous public-policy question," Sease said, adding that shipping hazardous materials is a necessary part of American industry.
But Sease also said CSX voluntarily stopped shipping toxic-inhalation hazards — suck as chlorine — on routes passing near the Capitol Complex in response to the District's attempted hazardous-material shipment ban. Ban proponents cited a Naval Research Laboratory study concluding that a sabotaged or overturned train carrying explosives or poisonous or flammable gases near the National Mall could kill up to 100,000 people.
Norton said her amendment in a transportation bill recently passed by the House would effectively supersede the District's ban — which is on hold pending a lawsuit — by rerouting certain shipments around urban areas.
As for the environmental risks, a spokesperson with the Anacostia Watershed Society said initial tests showed normal acidity levels. The spilled coal is a low-sulfur variety, "which is a good thing for the river,"
watershed society spokesperson Steven Reynolds said.
Six cars fell into the water, each filled to its 100-ton capacity, Sease said. A tour of the site showed more than half of that coal spilled into the river.
Tests show the coal hasn't significantly changed water quality around the crash site, Reynolds said. But the watershed society is concerned that the coal could decrease the river's already low levels of oxygen, which could kill fish.
"We have seen a few dead fish in the area," Reynolds said, explaining that vulnerable fish die first after dissolved-oxygen levels drop. He also said dangerous, potentially carcinogenic compounds could leach from the coal into the water.
But the greatest risk to the waterway's health is the long-buried industrial and agricultural chemicals layered in the riverbed. Sease said CSX contained the crash site with an impermeable tarp-like barrier, but added that the recovery process will inevitably stir up some sediment.
Karimi said disturbed toxins jeopardize the health of animals all the way up the food chain: insects and fish consume the chemicals, which are eaten by subsistence fishermen along the river. Birds also eat infected fish and insects before migrating to different regions.
The freight cars rolled from the rail yard, crashing through a barrier, before reaching the bridge because a worker did not properly set the train's brakes, Sease said. No one was injured, but three CSX workers are on leave during the company's investigation.
Sease said CSX stopped using the Southeast span last year because its supports were corroded. "We think there was something in the water ... We had not seen this condition before," he said.
Karimi said CSX, which is responsible for the cleanup, will likely be fined, but that the Environment Department will assess the damage before estimating possible penalties.
Karimi also said that while the accident is undeniably bad for the already polluted river, he hopes it will draw attention to the more significant damage occurring on a regular basis, citing the fertilizers, trash and raw sewage that gets dumped into the waterway.
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Posted on Nov 19, 2007 12:31pm.
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