"Usually when Jim Zoschg, a fly fisherman, hears big fish jumping it’s a good thing. Late Friday night, on the Driftwood Branch of Sinnemahoning Creek in Cameron County, that was definitely not the case.
"A Norfolk Southern Railway train derailment that morning near the north-central Pennsylvania town of Gardeau, McKean County, spilled a highly toxic chemical into Portage Run, an “exceptional value” wild trout stream and tributary of the Driftwood Branch, and Mr. Zoschg was following its progress downstream.
“I had a flashlight and was on a bridge near the village of Cameron and could see fish dying in the shallows,” said Mr. Zoschg, a watershed specialist with the Cameron County Conservation District. “Out in the dark in the main flow, I could hear big fish jumping to try to get out of the pollution. That’s something they do when they’re stressed.”
“Twenty-nine rail cars derailed in the accident, including three tank cars carrying sodium hydroxide that ruptured and spilled 47,000 gallons of the liquid, which flowed into Portage Run, then the Driftwood Branch and then Sinnemahoning Creek.”
Apparently you are not astute enough to understand
the environmental and economic impact this derailment
has on a rural county heavily dependent upon
tourism.
Perhaps you would prefer NS not face any
legal consequences from this ecological disaster.
Well I do think we need to protect our environment but the environmentalists have a tendancy to pronounce the sky is falling. When Cantara happened they were screaming there would be widespread devistation for years and years to come. They also said the impacts on tourism would be devistateing. In actuality the impact was not that bad (there are other tourist / recreation activities in the area), and within a few years the area had recovered quite well. NS should and probably will take responsability.
Sad to see this sort of environmental tragedy. Not only will it damage the watershed and streams, but it will also be another hazmat liability problem pushing RRs ever further towards refusing to carry hazmats and potentially getting rid of the common carrier status.
Pending the ruling on what caused the derailment, NS shouldn’t face any legal issues unless their neglegance caused this (ie bad track, wrong-thrown switch etc). If it was engineer error I think that the engineer should be at fault, not the railraod; even if they did hire him.
I’m sure there are laws or something to the sort that would make it impossible for my situation to work, but a man can dream can’t he?
An employer is legally responsible for the action or inaction of his employee. This part of the law of master and servant dates back to English Common Law. So, of course NS is responsible for the negligence of any of their employees including the engineer, if any such negligence is proven in court.
So, dreaming is about all you can do in this case.
I’d like to see them charged every penney that it costs to restore the site to 100% pristine condition, all the while keeping the NS top brass in a mud hut, down stream from the spill, so they can smell the stench, and devote their precious time exclusively to expediting the work.
Absent that, a pair of vice grips fixed solidly to the NS CEO’s privates, just to assure that disbursements for cleanup costs receives the timely approval it deserves.
The NIMBYs are typicaly selfish, ignorat, self important people that want all the benifits of society as long as it’s not in there backyard / vision / way. Like they want everywhere coverage of there cell phones but don’t want cell sites near there house. They want low utility rates but dont want power plants in there neighborhood. They usually try and block any progress that will have a negative impact (like ugly infrastructure in there view) or percieved negative impact, often useing the “it will damageing the environment” excuse…
Ah, thank you Chad, back to the issue at hand. I’m actually going to have to agree with AntiG on the fact about the NIMBY’s, however, I still don’t think that NS should be held responsible unless (like what I said in my first post) that there was faulty track or a switch that was thrown the wrong way (which in all honesty appears to be the only two causes, we’ll see when the offical verdict comes out).
LOL, not to be confused with the S.L.A.I.N.I.M.B.Y.'s (So long as it’s not in MY back yard)
People who see no legitimacy in any environmental concerns seen as important by locals forced to co exist with so called ‘progress’.
The “so what if your house will be indunated with stench after we build a new sewage treatment plant next door? you should have thought about that 30 years ago when you decided to buy a house next to a river” cretins [}:)]
Okay, how about the folks who buy a home much cheaper than the going rate because it’s near a major 60-year-old airport, or a 160-year-old railroad right-of-way, then complain about the noise from trains and planes?
Story in a Chicago newspaper last summer about a woman who bought her “dream house” – and was now complaining about the excessive train noise. The house she bought was 75 feet – 75 FEET! – from a grade crossing near the Proviso Globals on the UP main line in/out of Chicago, also a very busy Metra line.
“The real estate agent never told me it was such a busy railroad,” she said. “I didn’t know trains could be so noisy.” And she lives in a “quiet zone” (no horns at crossings), to boot. The article went on say say she wasn’t sure whom she should sue, but she was hiring an attorney.
