Tuesday, April 10, 2001

WESTMINSTER, Vt. (AP) A freight train derailment early Monday sent one of the locomotive engines into the Connecticut River and dumped as much as 2,200 gallons of diesel fuel into New England’s largest river.

Just hours later, an Amtrak passenger train would have passed over the same tracks, which apparently had been undermined by a spring snowmelt.

Charlie Miller, head of Vermont’s rail division, said there were no injuries in the 6 a.m. accident involving the New England Central freight train.

The primary concern was the environmental damage being caused by diesel fuel leaking from the locomotive that sat in the Connecticut. The locomotive, half-submerged in the river, leaked between 2,000 and 2,200 gallons.

"We are definitely looking it as a significant spill," said Mark Merchant, Environmental Protection Agency spokesman. "We haven’t had a spill this size in Vermont or New Hampshire in at least the last five years."

The EPA had worried earlier that the spill might have been as much as 6,000 gallons, but the total was lowered after further investigation.

Still, there was enough fuel in the water to kill some fish and waterfowl. Agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were en route to investigate how badly wildlife was affected.

A private cleanup company stretched a containment boom across the Connecticut River between Putney, Vt., and Westmoreland, N.H., about five miles downstream, to prevent fuel from flowing farther south. But melting ice flowing downstream forced the company to remove the boom. A smaller one remained around the locomotive.

State police said three locomotives were pulling a train of more than 80 cars. It appeared that at least one of the engines passed over an area that had been left unstable or even washed out by melting snow.

The track bed eventually gave way, though, and two engines toppled off the tracks along with at least eight cars. Several of the cars were hauling road salt and some of the box cars contained paper, Merchant said.

Miller said an investigation was under way, but a washout appeared to be the most likely cause of the accident.

"At this time of year, the likelihood is of it being a washout," he said. Water has been steadily running off the highlands into the Connecticut from the deep snows.

Duncan Higgins, deputy director of the Vermont Emergency Management division, said people who get their water from the Connecticut River south of Westminster were being warned not to drink water from the river.

Environmental agencies in downstream Massachusetts and Connecticut also were informed.

Vermont Yankee officials were monitoring water flowing into the nuclear power plant’s cooling system to ensure that it was not contaminated. The Vernon atomic plant is about 25 miles downstream.

Officials were trying to figure out how to keep the second derailed locomotive from fouling the river.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/Main.asp?SectionID=25&SubSectionID=378&ArticleID=30254

-- Doris (nocents@bellsouth.net), April 11, 2001