CN trash along rail lines piling up Piney residents’ complaints

Piney residents and officials are demanding CN rail crews “clean up their mess,” as leftover garbage, unused repair supplies and downed wires pose both a danger and an eyesore.

Middlebro resident Jim Overton has watched old telegraph poles falling down along tracks near his home, creating hazards for both animals and locals.

“Everything is rotting and falling down, and it’s becoming a hazard for everything,” he said. “If people want to go across the track and, in many areas, pick mushrooms and berries, along with wildlife moving through the area, the wires are dangerous and hanging down.”

Overton said he’s previously found deer and other animal carcasses caught in the wires because they attempt to run, get stuck and can’t break free. More of the wires have fallen over along the tracks in the last five years, he said.

Photos, supplied by Piney councillor Mark Bernard, showed stacks of steel pails, discarded railway ties and piles of metal plates in Vasser. Along the rail lines, a row of old telegraph poles and wires lay toppled over.

Piney’s chief administrative officer Martin Van Osch said he’s heard residents expressing concerns about the debris and garbage left behind by CN crews.

“We feel it’s their responsibility to keep their lines clean, to ensure that the waste left along the tracks isn’t posing an environmental hazard,” he said. “It’s also their responsibility to either manage, remove or improve those telegraph lines.”

Van Osch said the garbage and downed wires have been an issue for the 15 years he’s lived in the rural municipality. Local officials have raised concerns to CN in prior years, but its response was that the municipality could partner with CN to speed up the removal, he said.

“That would be a cost for ratepayers for a company that sees profits in the billions,” Van Osch said, noting that option would never be realistic for the municipality.

He said since the issues are with CN, it’s their responsibility.

Van Osch and other local politicians met with a CN public liaison consultant roughly six to eight weeks ago and voiced their concerns about the garbage and downed lines. He said there’s another meeting planned that could happen in December or the new year. He said there are regular meetings with CN staffers once or twice a year, and there’s often a lengthy list of issues needing to be addressed.

CN appears to have a “company culture” where its acceptable to discard garbage and construction materials after crews are done their work, Van Osch said.

As some maintenance crews come from out of province, their care for the environment seems not the same when they’re back in their “own backyard.” He said its seems normalized at a company level to leave construction material and waste on sites after they finish their work.

“Even though the higher management will release a public statement saying that they have care for the environment and the local people, what we see from an operational standpoint is quite opposite,” Van Osch said.

He said the rural municipality has a good working relationships with the local crews who maintain the tracks, but the problems stem from out-of-province crews.

Provencher MP Ted Falk said he’s heard concerns from both Piney officials and reeves from other municipalities along railway lines. When hearing the worries, Falk said he coordinated meetings with CN staffers and brought concerns forward to them on Oct. 23.

“They (CN) assured me they would deal with the issue and that they would be in contact with the affected municipalities,” he said. “So I’m expecting that will happen, and if it doesn’t, I will be in touch with my municipalities to find out if they’ve received contact and if there’s been satisfactory remedial action. If not, I’ll be connecting with CN again.”

In an email statement to The Carillon, CN said its in regular contact with Piney and their crews are “investigating the concerns.”

”This includes the removal of legacy communications infrastructure from CN property, which is part of a multi-year, network-wide project,” a CN spokesperson said.