7 December 2008
CP Found Guilty After Burrard Inlet Spill
Port Moody British Columbia - A B.C. Supreme Court judge
has upheld a conviction and fine against Canadian Pacific Railway following a derailment and a spill of 75,000 litres of a
"deleterious substance" near Burrard Inlet.
The derailment of tank cars happened in February 2003 as the cars were being moved to a siding next to the CPR main line adjacent to a
wharf facility in Port Moody.
Two cars fell over near the main line and were then hit by an eastbound train with about 75,000 litres of ethylene glycol aboard. It
spilled onto the track bed and into a ditch. About 11,000 litres were recovered. The rest either flowed into the marine environment or
was absorbed into the soil.
CPR was charged with depositing a deleterious substance in a fish-bearing body of water and fined $25,000 and ordered to
pay $50,000 into an environmental fund.
The company argued that it had taken reasonable care to prevent such a derailment - or, alternatively, that it was an accident that
was not foreseeable and that all reasonable steps had been taken to mitigate the damage.
But the trial judge rejected those arguments, and B.C. Supreme Court Justice William Grist upheld those findings Friday.
"In my view, the trial judge's finding that the appellant had failed to establish the defence of due diligence on a balance of
probabilities was a reasonable conclusion," Grist said.
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