Counting The Ways...
Anticipating Train Crash Fine Money, Local Leaders Discuss Needs

Fish were killed for many miles below the spill site. Experts believe that all aquatic life was destroyed for at least seven miles and that effects from the sodium hydroxide were measured for at least five times that far.

Norfolk Southern Railroad is expected to pay a hefty fine for the environmental disaster which followed the June 30 train crash near Gardeau.

Fines could add up to millions of dollars by the time the smoke clears from one of the state's most devastating environmental disasters.

Responding to a state-level request to begin outlining how fine money could be best used to improve Cameron County's environment, local organizations are announcing their needs and lining up for their cuts.

At Monday's meeting of the Cameron County Board of Commissioners, a laundry list of possible environmental improvement projects was presented by Jan Hampton, director of the Cameron County Conservation District.

The Pa. Dept. of Environmental Protection has asked Hampton's organization and others to submit proposals for use of the fines Norfolk Southern is expected to pay. The commissioners may serve as a clearinghouse for the many requests.

Hampton's organization is poised to use the fine money for any number of watershed improvement projects. Chief among them is the ongoing reduction of acid mine drainage entering the Driftwood Branch of Sinnemahoning Creek. Several erosion abatement projects could also be pursued, Hampton said.

Cameron County Emergency Management Director Kevin Johnson suggested that a portion of the money be used to improve wireless communications in underserved sections of the county. Ironically, the Gardeau and Keating Summit areas, in the vicinity of the train derailment, are among sections

where radio communications are lacking.

During a recent meeting here, Commissioner Glen Fiebig brought the issue to the forefront, noting that communication between the first responders at the crash site and others in the emergency response community were "basically non-existent" during the hours following the derailment.

DEP has ordered Norfolk Southern to restore the streams and acreage that were destroyed by toxic chemicals from one of the company's crashed trains to "pre-spill conditions," a tall order considering the normal quality of the stream most badly damaged. That section of the Portage Branch of the Sinnemahoning River was one of the few known to hold breeding populations of brown trout.

Norfolk Southern officials said they were "shocked" by the extent to which they are being asked to go to restore the spill site and the waters below.

The rail company has been given a Oct. 20 deadline to submit to DEP a detailed report on the extent of the damage at the site and the reclamation efforts the company plans to put into action.

Norfolk Southern spokesperson Rudy Husband said last week the company's report, being prepared by an independent environmental firm, is coming along well and will be ready by the deadline.

This all is a result of a crash that included 30 railcars that careened out of control on the "Keating Summit grade" on the morning of June 30. A violent crash at the bottom of the hill caused three rail tanker cars to split open, releasing roughly 42,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide into Big Fill Run, a tiny mountain tributary that flows under the railway from the east side of the tracks.

That rush of chemicals destroyed a large swath of wetlands on its way to the slightly larger Portage Run. Within hours, the chemical had made its way into the Sinnemahoning Portage Creek and the Driftwood Branch of the Sinnemahoning River.