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Railway fined for damaging stream

NORTH DELTA - The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway company has been fined $75,000 for damaging North Delta's Cougar Creek, a salmon bearing stream.

Surrey provincial court Judge John Lenaghan imposed the fine Friday, following a sentencing hearing.The railway company, owned by U.S. billionaire Warren Buffet, had been charged with four counts of depositing a deleterious substance and six counts of harmful alteration of fish habitat. The case was originally set for a nineday trial before the BNSF pleaded guilty to one count of the latter charge.It was BNSF's first offence, federal prosecutor Todd Gerhart noted. As such, the fine could not exceed $300,000.Cougar Creek's headwaters are in Newton, and from there it runs down into North Delta, where it meets the tracks off Westview Drive and 72nd Avenue near where a peat mining factory used to be. It is home to coho and chum salmon as well as cutthroat trout.The area is plagued with regular flooding, which has been exacerbated by urban development upstream."What a nightmare this place is," Lenaghan remarked, after hearing about its history of flooding and attempts to control the problem.In the fall of 2010, BNSF attempted to tackle the situation with a railmounted excavator that dumped nine railcars full of rocks - roughly 450 cubic yards - between the rail line and the creek.Some went into the water, filling in one-third of the width of its channel.Gerhart said the company didn't follow the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' plan. Fortunately, there was "no observed dead or dying fish as a result," he added.Richard DeFillippi, the BNSF's legal counsel, said only Surrey and Delta can prevent the flooding, but they haven't."We can't control it," he said.The $75,000 fine will be placed into an environmental damages fund that Delta and Surrey can apply to use for their projects.tzytaruk@thenownewspaper.com


About the Author: Tom Zytaruk

I write unvarnished opinion columns and unbiased news reports for the Surrey Now-Leader.
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