Along Virginia’s Chickahominy River, a CSX train derailment toppled 53 coal cars and two locomotives. A week and a half later, waterway advocates are questioning the impact of the incident on one of Virginia’s most ecologically important rivers.
The train went off the tracks on Oct. 25 in Providence Forge, east of Richmond, Virginia. Aerial photos show train cars littering the tracks alongside wetlands on the Chickahominy, an 87-mile-long winding tributary of the James River. CSX confirms that an estimated 7,000 gallons of diesel fuel was involved in the crash. They are recovering about 4,000 gallons. And they are cleaning up about 4,000 tons of coal.
The James River Association (JRA) publicly expressed concern about the pollutants that spilled into the Chickahominy’s “fragile swamplands”, pointing out that the Department of Conservation and Recreation rated the site in the top 3.5% of all lands in Virginia for ecological core value. Downstream, the land is protected as important habitat for freshwater mussels, underwater grasses, and migratory fish…