(The Canadian Press circulated the following article on August 8.)
WABAMUN, Alta. — Canadian National officials are looking at a faulty section of track as the possible cause of a train derailment that spilled thousands of litres of oil into Lake Wabamun, a spokesman said Sunday.
Damaged railway track is being collected from the site of Wednesday’s derailment and analysed by CN before being sent to the federal Transportation Safety Board for laboratory examination.
Jim Feeny said the company electronically inspects its track four times a year, and this section last had such an inspection in May. He said the Transportation Safety Board’s investigators will make the final ruling on the cause.
‘‘We’re saying there may have been a specific instance of a track problem that may be related to this derailment,’’ he said Sunday before a scheduled noon meeting with area residents to update them on cleanup and containment efforts at the lake, about 65 kilometres west of Edmonton.
‘‘But the final nature of it has to be determined.’’
Forty-five of 140 cars left the tracks. Some contained bunker C fuel oil, used in liquid asphalt and to power barges and ships. Fifteen of those cars, as well as a car full of lubricating oil, began to leak into the lake and surrounding shoreline.
Alberta Environment spokesman Brad Ledig said Sunday CN has reported to government that 734,000 litres of the fuel oil is estimated to have spilled from the damaged rail cars.
Feeny said the track in this area had been physically inspected, which the company does four times a week, a day before the derailment. The company’s electronic inspection machinery runs over the track every three months.
Meanwhile, more equipment arrived this weekend, including heavy-duty containment booms designed to contain the oil slick and keep it from shifting to unharmed areas. Feeny said the priority is to get the booms in the water because the oil still hadn’t been fully contained.
Teams were on the beach and in boats continuing the cleanup. Skimmers on the water were removing oil from the surface, while vacuum trucks were operating on the beaches.
Ledig said the company reported Saturday it had removed 171,000 litres of material from the ground and the lake, but it hadn’t analysed how much of that is water and how much is the spilled fuel oil.
‘‘They’re vacuuming it off the water,’’ Ledig said. ‘‘It’s impossible to just take the product.’’
He said Alberta Environment is pushing CN to clean up the site of the derailment to make sure no more oil leaks into the lake, but the company was having problems reaching all the damaged rail cars.