A St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation executive says a damaged freighter dumped about 75 tonnes of oil into the waterway near Montreal, though he expects that it will be cleaned up by tomorrow morning.
Richard Corfe, the head of the federal seaway corporation, told CTV's Canada AM that crews are already on the water on Wednesday morning, working to get the oil cleaned up as quickly as possible.
"There's about 30 people on the water, as we speak, starting to skim and vacuum that oil up," Corfe said during an interview from Montreal on Wednesday morning.
"It's a long process. It'll take probably all day, we'll do an update later on in the afternoon to see where we are, but we expect to be able to restart navigation tomorrow morning sometime."
The Canada Steamship Lines freighter ran aground when it experienced engine failure on Monday morning.
Corfe said the spill was contained quickly as the management corporation, the Coast Guard and the freighter company followed an emergency plan that was already in place to deal with spills.
"Now it's a matter of cleaning up. That's going to go on for probably all day today and maybe into tomorrow morning," said Corfe.
He said it is a rare occurrence for such a large spill to occur.
"These incidents don't happen very often: I've been with the Seaway 28 years and this is the first time we've dealt with an incident of this magnitude," he said.
Because the spill happened in a man-made canal, crews were "able to control the water flow so it wouldn't go into the river proper," said Corfe.
In addition to the spilled oil, Corfe said the freighter has a hole in its bottom that must be repaired before it can be moved.
With files from The Canadian Press
