CPKC railway hit with violation notice after derailment in Maine
Posted May 2, 2023 11:44 am.
State authorities in Maine have hit Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. with a violation notice over fallout from its cleanup efforts after a freight train went off the tracks last month.
On April 15, a CPKC train hit a track washout in a wooded area near Moosehead Lake in northwestern Maine, some 220 kilometres southeast of Quebec City, setting several cars ablaze.
Government officials say they sent a notice of violation to the railway after heavy construction equipment deployed to access the crash site crushed culverts and caused a significant amount of sediment to enter streams, in violation of a pollution control law.
Melanie Loyzim, commissioner of the state’s Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, sent a second letter instructing CPKC to implement erosion control measures immediately.
CPKC said last month that locomotives and four derailed lumber cars went up in flames, with crews using booms — absorbent, tubelike barriers — to contain spilled diesel fuel.
The Calgary-based railway said three crew members were taken to a local hospital for non-life-threatening injuries and released the same day.
