(The following story by Hanneke Brooymans and James Baxter appeared on The Edmonton Journal website on December 8.)
EDMONTON — CN Rail has offered up to $5,000 apiece to homeowners around Wabamun Lake — the first time in its history the railway has offered compensation for the loss of use and enjoyment of a body of water.
CN’s initial compensation offer would have given $5,000 each to Whitewood Sands residents with properties on the lake near the scene of an oil spill in August. Others there would have received $2,000 each.
Owners of lakefront homes in other areas around the lake were offered $1,500 each, and those not on the lake were offered $1,000.
The offer also applied to Village of Wabamun residents, according to minutes taken at a residents meeting.
The offer would have cost the company about $1.8 million.
Those initial offers were rejected. In the weeks since then, negotiations on the amounts have progressed significantly, said Doug Goss, chairman of the Lake Wabamun Residents Committee.
“This is very complex, as you might imagine,” Goss said. “One claim that everyone at the lake has is for the loss of the use of the lake. With 1,500 residents there are different views and values and different views of what compensation is.”
Neither CN nor Canadian Pacific have ever paid for loss of use and recreation enjoyment of a lake, Goss said.
“So this is new territory. It’s never gone to the Supreme Court, it’s never been litigated.”
Goss hopes residents will reach a deal with CN by the end of January.
Residents discussed the compensation offer at a meeting on Oct. 29. According to minutes of the meeting, Goss told residents CN was “mad as hell” with the provincial government and threatened to move its regional office out of Edmonton.
The Aug. 3 derailment spilled more than 700,000 litres of fuel oil and pole-treating oil in and around the lake. Since the spill, the company has been under a strict environmental protection order from Alberta Environment.
Provincial investigators executed search warrants on the company’s Walker Yard facility in Edmonton. That generated “a lot of anger, I think, that (CN) were treated like criminals and things like that,” said Goss, adding that the company sent Premier Ralph Klein a letter threatening to relocate.
The company’s regional office in Edmonton oversees operations from northwestern Ontario to the Pacific. About 1,400 people work for the company in the Edmonton area.
Jim Feeny, a CN spokesman, said he couldn’t comment on correspondence that may have been exchanged between senior levels of government and the company.
SHOCK
News of the letter was a “shock” to Klein.
“I haven’t seen it,” said the premier, although he said he had been aware that CN was upset about some of the fallout from the Wabamun spill.
Klein said CN has invested millions in new infrastructure around Edmonton. Pulling out now, just as Alberta and British Columbia are developing a new container port in Prince Rupert that would dramatically increase traffic through Edmonton, makes little sense, he said.
“This is the staging area for all of Western Canada. Where would they put it?”
Klein said CN and the province will share responsibility for making sure future environmental threats are avoided or quickly controlled.
He said he supports a recommendation of the environmental protection commission calling for government and industry to plan for unanticipated disasters.
Klein said CN Rail will be required, for example, to keep emergency equipment in areas where problems could occur, but said he couldn’t give more details because the suggestions have yet to go to the Conservative caucus for debate.
Some Wabamun property owners say they’re more concerned about the spill’s long-term impact on the lake than with compensation for loss of use.
“From my perspective, it’s not an issue about amount of money and I think that’s where the divide is in responding to this,” said Linda Duncan, vice-president of the Lake Wabamun Enhancement and Protection Association. “There are those in my organization that find it frankly reprehensible that that would be the focus.
“Our greater concern is about the long-term damage to the lake and who will be accountable for that.”
CN gave its long-term monitoring plan for the lake to Alberta Environment by the Oct. 3 deadline stipulated in the provincial protection order. The report has not been made public yet.
Alberta Environment is reviewing the plan because it will guide all future spill cleanup work in the area, said Brad Ledig, a department spokesman.