When 43 CN rail cars left the railway track alongside Lake Wabamun this past August, they poured a kind of hazardous-chemical soup atop the late-summer plans of area residents and campers.

Six weeks later, the clean-up continues. There's talk of a class action lawsuit and the province is setting up an Environmental Protection Commission to review and improve Alberta's capacity to respond to environmental incidents and to identify potentially high-risk incidents affecting Alberta's water bodies.

Behind the scenes, real estate agent Leann Knysh of Century 21 Decker Realty in Stony Plain measures the Aug. 3 derailment in lost clients. "A lot of people pulled their listings right away because they knew they probably wouldn't be able to sell them," she says.

By late last week, Knysh's listings noted only one property in the Wabamun area.

Photo courtesy of Safety Boss
REIN investment guru Don Campbell believes incident will be largely forgotten after two years.

Beyond the fear of a short-term property devaluation, clients didn't want buyers to think their sales were motivated by the derailment, adds Jim Kulak, a broker at the same real estate office as Knysh.

Like others tuned into an Alberta-wide boom in lake-community real estate, Kulak doesn't expect the spill to engender a long-term collapse in property values at Wabamun. "I don't see any long-term impact from it," says Kulak.

The current president of the Edmonton Real Estate Board, Kulak has sold real estate in the Stony Plain, Spruce Grove and Edmonton area for 30 years. Familiar with rising interest in year-round and seasonal properties at Wabamun and other area lakes, including Lac Ste. Ann, Jackfish Lake and Isle Lake, Kulak sees an upside to the derailment since media coverage and public interest are likely to prompt regulatory changes that will protect all Alberta lakes from similar incidents in the future.

Knysh agrees. One of the big pluses in the aftermath of the derailment at Wabamun "is that there's a lot of attention to what's happened at the lake.”

While no one likes to link beneficial change to environmental disasters that arguably shouldn't have happened in the first place, Knysh is hopeful the incident will improve environmental protection for all Alberta lakes.

Real estate investment guru Don Campbell, president and founder of the Alberta Real Estate Investment Network (REIN), says an environmental disaster's lasting impact on property values depends on how it influences collective long-term memory.

He predicts the railroad and the Alberta government will clean up the Wabamun spill because "they have to.”

After that, he gives the Wabamun incident two years before it's mostly forgotten. In the meantime, motivated vendors (those who have to sell for whatever reason) may find their property devalued and buyers, including investors, may come out ahead.

Like Kulak and Knysh, Campbell says new regulations protecting water quality and emergency response may be a long-term boon to all properties linked to lake amenities in Alberta.

That talk earns a quick nod from real estate developer Keith Bickerton, a partner in the Lakeway Landing subdivision nearing completion in Alberta's fastest-growing lake community, Sylvan Lake.

Located in the County of Red Deer and an easy commute from Edmonton and Calgary, the Town of Sylvan Lake has issued building permit values in excess of $30 million in four of the last five years.

Bickerton says Sylvan Lake has been adding 150 to 200 single-family units a year. More single-family homes are also being built in summer village communities on the lake's west and north shores.

While most residents of the town's newest subdivisions work in Sylvan Lake or commute to jobs in neighbouring communities like Red Deer, Bickerton says they all share their lake-front neighbours' abiding interest in the long-term health of the water in Sylvan Lake itself.

While the railway, located some distance from the shores of Sylvan Lake, isn't an issue in itself, a diverse group of local stakeholders is working together on matters related to water quality degradation linked to residential development and lake use.

Bickerton credits the recent co-operation of those stakeholders, from developers to environmentalists, with setting higher standards for sewage treatment for new developments.

Viewed alongside an overall concern with water quality conservation, the Wabamun derailment is another way to get "everybody to get on their toes and make sure they get some sort of protection from that type of thing," says Bickerton.

"The health of the lake is absolutely essential to property values," adds Remax Real Estate broker Jim Jardine.

With 28 years in the real estate business, Jardine specializes in Sylvan's lake-front properties and consults to developers looking to build more.

Experience tells Jardine that long-term real estate appreciation in these areas boils down to a pretty simple concept: When it comes to environmental protection, if we can do something better, we should.

(Joy Gregory can be reached at joy@businessedge.ca)