The Anacostia River, 11 months after a CSX Corp. freight train derailment sent six coal-loaded cars plunging into the waterway, “has been returned to the condition it was,” a top D.C. official said.
That’s not saying much, acknowledged George Hawkins, director of the Department of the Environment. But the polluted river may still benefit, thanks to a $660,000 settlement between CSX and the District.
Under a consent decree signed Sept. 4, CSX will pay the District $50,000 for “alleged violations,” $60,561.79 to reimburse the city for its emergency response, $50,000 to restore the natural resources damaged by the derailment, and $500,000 to create an environmental endowment fund for the benefit of the river’s ecosystem.
CSX “denies any liability to the District” in the settlement.
“The railroad believes it was important to resolve the outstanding concerns of the District in a timely fashion,” CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan said Friday. “The settlement of these issues is particularly important in that it will further the efforts to protect the Anacostia River, a well-known resource for the District and the region.”
The Nov. 9 incident occurred after a CSX operator failed to properly secure the brakes on an 89-car freight train being moved within the Benning Road rail yard. The train coasted more than a quarter mile to a bridge in Anacostia Park, which had been closed a year for structural problems. The bridge collapsed under the weight of the train.
Nine cars derailed and six crashed into the water, sending 600 tons of coal into the Anacostia. Hawkins described the derailment as “pretty severe,” and while the vast majority of coal was removed by a “quick and effective” CSX response, “there were toxins put into the water column that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.”
The $500,000 endowment, to be managed by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, likely will be directed to a number of Anacostia-related cleanup projects, Hawkins said.
“They did make a good-faith effort to clean it up because they knew that we, and the District and the EPA, were watching,” said Robert Boone, chairman of the Anacostia Waterfront Society board. “Even if the coal was totally inert, and it wasn’t, leaving it there would have been equal to simply trashing the river, and that’s the mentality we’ve been fighting for years.”
