(The following story by Nancy Yang appeared on the St. Paul Pioneer Press website on March 6.)
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The antifreeze that spilled Wednesday from a train car into the Mississippi River near a Minnesota-Wisconsin bridge is water soluble, preventing cleanup crews from recovering it, a BNSF Railway spokesman said today.
“It turns out that the normal recovery process that would have involved using booms and dikes is not possible,” Steve Forsberg said. “Most of (the antifreeze) ended up in the water and there is no way to recover it once it’s in the water.”
Instead, crews are putting a water sampling plan in place, sampling water upstream and downstream from the spill location.
“My understanding is that in about 10 days, the antifreeze will have dissolved and degraded to be below detectable levels,” Forsberg said. “One of the things that it could do is asphyxiate fish, which will be watched.”
About 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, a 135-car mixed-freight train went into an “undesired emergency,” meaning the brakes came on and the two-person crew had to get out and investigate. Other railway officials were nearby and joined the search.
Finally, in the 76th car, a 4-inch-wide hole was discovered, leaking antifreeze. As the crew was inspecting the hole, the entire car buckled, spilling about 20,000 gallons of antifreeze.
“The cause for this unfortunate incident is still under investigation,” Forsberg said. “Neither the leak nor the buckling of the car should have occurred.”
At the time of the spill, the head of the train had come to a stop on the Prescott Bridge in Washington County, spanning the St. Croix River just west of Prescott, Wis. The 76th car was about a mile west of the bridge, where the track is adjacent to the Mississippi River.
The site of the spill is the St. Croix Subdivision of BNSF’s main line, which stretches from Seattle to Chicago. About 40 to 45 trains a day use the route.
Two tracks were shut down for a few hours after the spill. One reopened about 8 p.m. Wednesday. The second track is expected to reopen later today, once mechanical experts have inspected the train cars and the damaged car is removed.
Forsberg said the train schedule was only slightly disrupted during the hours both tracks were closed.