18 May 2006
Grain Spilled Because Bin Late: CPR
Gap - Canadian Pacific Railway says the late delivery
of a bin was the reason a pile of fermenting grain, mixed with ballast, sat on the ground at Gap Siding for at least four days before
crews could clean it up.
The Municipal District of Bighorn notified CPR of the grain and ballast pile - roughly five yards in size - last Thursday,
(11 May 2006), and by the following day crews had arrived with a bin to move the pile off the ground and out of reach of
bears.
No bears had been reported feeding on the pile. "I don't know of the timing in terms of when the vacuum truck had to deposit the
material to free up the space so we could continue its vacuuming, but certainly we will be checking on that to see if it was a timing
issue," CPR spokesperson Ed Greenberg said Monday (15 May 2006). "We try to ensure the bin is there when the
material has to be dumped," he said, adding the railway company intends to solve any issues with timing with its contractor.
MD of Bighorn Councillor Dene Cooper, chairman of the Bighorn Corridor Environmental Committee (BCEC), wrote the letter alerting CPR to
the problem. He described the new siding at Gap as a multi-year, multi-million dollar plan in its final stages
of development. As a result, he said, the MD and CPR are working together to solve problems with weeds and grain at Gap. "That's
how we noticed it so quickly and that's how we wrote them so quickly. It isn't the best practice both BCEC are working towards, but we
will do better," he said. "They seem to have gotten at the problem quite quickly but they don't seem to have arrived at a
final solution, which is a lid!"
The load has been covered with a tarp and Greenberg said the contractor has assured CPR that the bin is appropriate for its intended
purpose. He added CPR attempts to ensure an empty bin is on site when the vacuum truck crew needs to empty its load. "We share any
concerns the MD of Bighorn has and we certainly want to ensure they are aware of our steps that we taking to avoid to a contact with
wildlife, particularity grizzly bears," Greenberg said.
The vacuum truck crews regularly empty the truck at Gap, but normally, when a bin is on site, the load is dumped on the edge of the
siding and then transferred into the bin. When the bin is full, it is hauled by truck to Medicine Hat where the contents are disposed.
Greenberg said the reasoning behind using Gap as a transfer site is to keep the vacuum truck on the tracks as much as possible, rather
than have it leave the Bow Valley/Rocky Mountain national parks region to dump its load, which takes one to two months to fill. "We
don't want to take the vacuum truck out of the park region, we want to keep it in the parks and make sure it is vacuuming up anything
on the tracks," he said.
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