Railway company settles with GA Environmental Protection Division over derailment that killed fish

HALL COUNTY ,Ga. — Norfolk Southern Railways settled this month with state regulators over a train accident.

Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division fined the company $10,000.

Three train cars derailed in Hall County in July.

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One of them dumped soybeans into Flat Creek, which ended up sucking the oxygen out of the water and killed fish.

Since the soybean spill, an aerator has been pumping oxygen back into the murky water.

“Nobody looks at a soybean and thinks it’s a pollutant,” Jason Ulseth with Chattahoochee Riverkeeper said.

Ulseth and his team have been monitoring oxygen levels of the creek and taking stock of its fish.

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They have counted and photographed dozens of fish they said perished from the spill.

“This has been kind of the most unusual ones we’ve dealt with where normally it’s like a sewage spill or a chemical spill. This is the first I ever dealt with that was caused by a vegetable,” Ulseth told Channel 2 Action News.

In a statement, the company says “We’ll continue to work with our state partners to identify the source of the material and remove it from the creek.”

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