Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Petrotrin is fac­ing an­oth­er hefty fine from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, even as it con­tin­ues mop­ping up op­er­a­tions in the Guaracara Riv­er, Mara­bel­la. This af­ter oil from the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery made its way in­to the wa­ter course over the week­end.In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, EMA chair­man Dr Al­lan Bachan hint­ed at pos­si­ble ac­tion against the state-run oil com­pa­ny for its lat­est spill.

He said the EMA is "very con­cerned by the in­for­ma­tion that Petrotrin has been giv­ing and has giv­en us, es­pe­cial­ly in light of that (week­end) in­ci­dent."Just un­der one year ago, the EMA fined Petrotrin $20 mil­lion for en­vi­ron­men­tal vi­o­la­tions fol­low­ing an oil spill in La Brea which im­pact­ed 12 com­mu­ni­ties along the south­west­ern penin­su­la. In Ju­ly, slop oil from the re­fin­ery al­so es­caped in­to the Guaracara Riv­er and cre­at­ed hav­oc for Mara­bel­la res­i­dents.

Now, some six months lat­er, res­i­dents are once again liv­ing with the dis­com­fort of an­oth­er oil spill.Petrotrin is yet to re­lease how much bar­rels of oil was spilled, but Bachan said the com­pa­ny re­port­ed that some 15 bar­rels had spilled in­to the riv­er.Bachan said in De­cem­ber, the EMA had to is­sue a no­tice of vi­o­la­tion against Petrotrin for fail­ing to get in­for­ma­tion in a time­ly man­ner for the au­thor­i­ty to con­duct its in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Re­fer­ring to the cur­rent Mara­bel­la spill, Bachan said, "My un­der­stand­ing is that the in­ci­dent has been cleaned up and we are con­tin­u­ing to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter to as­cer­tain and make a de­ter­mi­na­tion on how we will pro­ceed with this lat­est in­ci­dent."On Sun­day night, oil from the re­fin­ery be­gan seep­ing in­to the Guaracara Riv­er. Mara­bel­la res­i­dents com­plained that since Sat­ur­day they had been smelling a high sul­phur scent in their area and no­ticed the oil in the riv­er on Mon­day morn­ing.

Petrotrin, in its me­dia re­leas­es since the spill, said the Mara­bel­la spill was a small leak and as­sured that the oil had been con­tained.Yes­ter­day, Bachan said the EMA is cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing the spill but de­clined to make a pro­nounce­ment on what ac­tion the au­thor­i­ty will take com­ing out of this in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

"We will take the nec­es­sary ac­tion which is al­lowed for us un­der the law in terms of this in­ci­dent and any in­ci­dent. I can­not say what the ac­tion will be be­cause we are still await­ing in­for­ma­tion from Petrotrin," he said.Bachan said what is wor­ry­ing to the au­thor­i­ty is the fre­quen­cy of the oil spills."We are very con­cerned about the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact on that area. As I have said in nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions be­fore I am very con­cerned by the in­ci­dents of pol­lu­tion in that riv­er and we need to ad­dress the mat­ter."

The EMA boss con­tent­ed that Petrotrin needs to find some so­lu­tion to the prob­lems it is fac­ing."I can­not speak to their en­gi­neer­ing and main­te­nance is­sues, but at the end of the day they need to ad­dress all the is­sues re­gard­ing the en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues that arise out of in­ci­dents such as that," he said.Petrotrin, he added, should know "they need to get their act to­geth­er. They need to find ways to mit­i­gate the risk against these po­ten­tial in­ci­dents from hap­pen­ing in the fu­ture."

He al­so stressed the need for ro­bust leg­is­la­tion to deal with such in­ci­dents."We are very in­dus­tri­al, we are mov­ing to­wards a high­ly in­dus­tri­alised coun­try and the gen­er­a­tion of waste is very high in the coun­try. We have to pro­tect our coun­try and our en­vi­ron­ment in a man­ner that al­lows for the ben­e­fit of the fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. We have to get in place these pieces of im­por­tant leg­is­la­tion like the Haz­ardous Waste Rules and the Waste Rules," Bachan said.

He al­so said he hoped the leg­is­la­tion will be passed quick­ly.

Petrotrin re­sponds

Petrotrin cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Gillian Fri­day says sig­nif­i­cant progress has been made in ef­forts to clear the Guaracara Riv­er.In an e-mail to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Fri­day said the com­pa­ny is con­tin­u­ing its clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties along the riv­er fol­low­ing "the small leak from the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery on De­cem­ber 21."She as­sured that the com­pa­ny's con­cern is for "the well­be­ing of the res­i­dents in the neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ty and, mind­ful of any pos­si­ble dis­com­fort."

"We are work­ing in­dus­tri­ous­ly to en­sure that the area is re­stored in as short a time­frame as pos­si­ble," Fri­day said."Since the dis­cov­ery of the leak our em­ploy­ees have been in the com­mu­ni­ty con­duct­ing con­tin­u­ous air qual­i­ty tests to mon­i­tor for volatile or­gan­ic com­pounds (VOCs). Tests for VOCs have re­turned neg­a­tive re­sults."

Yes­ter­day, por­tions of the riv­er and its banks re­mained coat­ed with oil and there was a faint scent of sul­phur in the air in Mara­bel­la com­mu­ni­ty.