Municipalities demand some control over trains, materials passing by

MONTREAL — A growing chorus of municipalities across Quebec and Canada are demanding that rail companies release details about the hazardous materials they transport and prove their infrastructure is sound, following the Lac- Mégantic tragedy in which 20 people are dead and 30 are missing.

At the same time, Quebec is looking into resurrecting a law passed 12 years ago but never adopted that would force train lines to provide lists of dangerous products they are transporting through municipalities.

Guy Pilon, mayor of the rapidly growing municipality of Vaudreuil- Dorion, is requesting that freight trains in urban areas lower their speeds. Magog Mayor Vicky May Hamm has called for talks with Montreal Maine & Atlantic Railway ( MMA), which runs the train tracks that cross through Magog’s downtown core — and through Lac- Mégantic.

MMA’s suggestion that it would move its conductor switchover from Nantes to Sherbrooke received a frosty response from Sherbrooke’s mayor.

“I understand that in Sherbrooke, they already have a rail yard, and there are trains there,” Bernard Sevigny told TVA news. “Except that we are in the urban heart of the sixthlargest city in Quebec.”

The problem, Sevigny noted, is the municipality has no say in matters related to rail firms.

“We never know what types of products there are in the wagons, and obviously, when there’s a catastrophe, it’s the elected officials ... that have to manage the impact afterward.”

The frustration surfaced weeks

When there’s a catastrophe, it’s the elected officials ... that have to manage the impact afterward.

BERNARD SEVIGNY

SHERBROOKE’S MAYOR

before the Lac- Mégantic disaster, when six tanker cars bearing oil products were left teetering on a damaged rail bridge during Calgary’s flooding in late June. “How is it we don’t have regulatory authority over ( the condition of the bridge), but it’s my guys down there risking their lives?” Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said, blasting Canadian Pacific Railway.

“This has been a constant frustration for every municipal politician in this country forever,” Nenshi said.

Railways are responsible for their own inspections, and are not obliged to tell Canadian municipalities what type of materials and how much of them are being shipped.

On Monday, a department head with Montreal’s public security department said its information on the trains that pass through Montreal’s neighbourhoods laden with hazardous materials “is virtually nil.”

Meanwhile, companies with fixed addresses in the city must give detailed inventories of any hazardous stock so the city can prepare its emergency plans.

Montreal’s mayor’s office said Wednesday it has been pushing Ottawa for years to make changes, and “there will be a renewal of that pressure in the coming weeks,” spokesman Jonathan Abecassis said.