More oil spilled in the Lac-Mégantic train disaster than was previously reported, according to new information made public by Quebec’s environment department.
While the department had previously estimated that the 72-car train that crashed July 6 was carrying 7.2 million litres of crude oil, it now says it was in fact carrying nearly a half million litres more of oil — an estimated 7.6 million litres.
In July the environment department estimated 5.6 million litres of that oil spilled from the crashed train cars or burned in the ensuing fire. But the department’s October update now says nearly 6 million litres — 5.978 million to be precise — burned or was spilled in the devastating accident that left 47 people dead.
The new numbers came from the accident investigation, which showed that the actual amount of oil in each train car was higher than the first estimates done in July because of the way the cars were filled, said Paul Benoît of Quebec’s environment department. With that new information, the estimates for the amount of oil in the train cars and what was spilled or burned both changed, Benoît said Monday.
“We estimated the volumes, but during the investigation they were able to better estimate the actual volumes,” he said.
Oil saturated the ground around the crash site, the town’s sewer system, and spilled into the lake and nearby Chaudière River. Oil also reached as far as 120 kilometres downriver from the crash site, the environment department said last month. An estimated 100,000 litres of oil spilled into the Chaudière River.
Cleanup and decontamination operations are continuing in Lac-Mégantic, Benoît said. They include assessing the level of contamination of soil and buildings near the crash site, removing contaminated soil and pumping oily water from around the crash site.
Between Sept. 3 and Oct. 21, nearly 11 million litres of oily water was removed from the lake, soil and sewer systems in Lac-Mégantic. Altogether, Quebec’s environment department says 41.6 million litres of oily water have been removed from around the town.
The environment department says it is unable to estimate how much oil is in the water that has been collected. The concentration of hydrocarbons in the water ranged from between 2 to 50 per cent, depending on where it was collected, the department said.