As Oil Transport by rail continues to Increase, so do the numbers of Oil Train Accidents. WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff staff in Lac-Mégantic worked to rebuild their town after it was badly damaged by an oil train accident.
On July 6, 2013, at about 1:15 a.m., a Montreal, Maine and Atlantic (MMA) Railway train carrying 7.7 million litres of petroleum crude oil jumped the track in the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic, unleashing a flood of burning oil into the heart of the downtown area. Dozens of buildings were destroyed and 47 people died. The building housing WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff’s office in Lac-Mégantic was damaged by the fire. In the aftermath, WSP (now part of WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff) contributed to the town’s reconstruction.
During the year-long investigation into one of the worst rail accidents in North America, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada identified 16 factors that contributed to this catastrophic incident. Beyond cause and effect, however, the increasingly controversial practice of transporting crude oil by rail was placed in the spotlight.
As oil transport by rail in North America is reported to have increased by 4,000 percent over the last five years1, the investigation also points to an increase in oil train accidents resulting in highly toxic and damaging results. With train tracks cutting through city centres, the eminent question on how to ensure public safety is pushed to the forefront.
Communities around the world affected by rail shipments of crude oil need to address and incorporate resilience into the development of their built environments. The MMA train’s last stop before Nantes, where the train lost control and crashed in Lac-Mégantic, was Montréal, the second largest city in Canada. The same train also passed through other major cities in North America such as Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, and Toronto, to name a few (see Figure 1).
Rebuilding Lac-Mégantic
We acquire the strength we have overcome. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
As sorrow subsided in the aftermath of the accident, discussions on rebuilding the town centre took shape. The question of “rail or no rail” was briefly debated, but the majority of residents remained adamant that no rail should pass through downtown again.
The assets of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway, which declared bankruptcy after the derailment, were bought by Fortress Investment Group which struck an agreement with the town of Lac-Mégantic by promising not to transport dangerous goods through its downtown core until at least January 1, 2016. The firm is to invest $10 million to repair its Canadian stretch of tracks. It will also contribute to the cost of a feasibility study examining a rail bypass around the town, a popular but hefty option with an estimated price tag of $50 to $175 million.
The subject of building a “resilient” town is a recurring theme for the residents, if not a beacon of aspiration to guide the future planning and rebuilding process. Over a hundred businesses were destroyed, displaced, or rendered inaccessible and many residents had been left homeless, losing their livelihood, and their possessions. To this date, toxic remnants of the accident continue to block access to the town’s centre. The buildings that remain standing erect are slated for demolition due to contamination. Among the many challenges is funding the cost of decontamination and reconstruction.
A Resilient and Sustainable Urban Energy System
WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff’s Lac-Mégantic office was located in a building on Frontenac Street (see Figure 2) which had to be demolished as part of a government initiative to mitigate health hazards and risks. Contributing to the town’s reconstruction effort, WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff Project Manager Mario Blais and his team in Lac-Mégantic proposed a concept for the town, the Lac Mégantic: Green City Plan.
This innovative yet sensible proposal focuses on creating a resilient and more efficient urban energy system by enhancing the city’s ability to generate and manage energy in a more sustainable manner. The proposed Green City Plan would support the town’s enormous job of rebuilding by establishing a large utility management tunnel under the street. The utility tunnel would function as a multi-network gallery of energy underground, where all community energy cables, wires, pipes, ducts, and other networks would pass through without interference. This would include a hydrothermal energy system for space conditioning (heating/cooling). The tunnel would be designed large enough to hold all the various utilities and to accommodate maintenance and other workers. This would allow power, heat, and other utilities to be more easily connected without the need for digging up the street, for example, when new buildings need to be connected to the grid.
The proposed system would have the ability to identify the heating and cooling needs of all buildings that are connected to the network and respond accordingly, thereby managing and exchanging the town’s local energy resources and reducing its dependency on fossil fuels. The system would be sustainable, accessible, and efficient; and most importantly it would mitigate the impact of future disruptions. In this Green City Plan, central heat would be generated from a proposed hydrothermal power plant at the nearby Chaudière River, of which Lake Mégantic is the source. Other renewable energy sources and sustainable practices would include:
- Biomass energy used for additional support;
- Use of solar power to optimize operations; and
- Energy recovery from recycled greywater.
While elements of the Green City Plan are in use in major cities, such a plan is unprecedented in smaller towns and communities such as in this region.
Conclusion
Lac-Mégantic is slowly but surely rebuilding; and WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff has led four projects, ranging from construction of new commercial complexes on Papineau Street (see Figure 3) to reconstruction of businesses and institutional buildings, all beginning with sludge and debris removal.
Resilience is the building block of any community. Communities around the world need to incorporate resilience into the development of their built environments. In the words of Lac-Mégantic newspaper editor Rémi Tremblay, “Le centre-ville du Lac Mégantic pourrait devenir un exemple de relève à tout le moins pour l’Amérique du Nord où de nombreuses petites villes sont traversées par une voie ferrée et par des convois de pétrole et de matières dangereuses.” (“Downtown Lac-Mégantic could become an example for North America, at least, where rail lines and convoys of petroleum and other hazardous materials traverse through town centres.”)
1http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/02/16/3623379/oil-train-derails-in-canada/
