Yvonne Ba­boolal

En­vi­ron­men­tal­ists yes­ter­day warned the Gov­ern­ment that the on­go­ing oil spill along the south-west­ern penin­su­la could re­sult in a ma­jor eco-dis­as­ter, with one of them call­ing on Petrotrin and Trin­mar to im­me­di­ate­ly shut down their trans­mis­sion sys­tems un­til the source of the spill is de­tect­ed and stopped.

The call was made by en­vi­ron­men­tal lob­by­ist and sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men & Friends of the Sea, Gary Aboud, even as Petrotrin ad­mit­ted yes­ter­day that it still had not de­tect­ed the source of the spill which had main­ly af­fect­ed the La Brea com­mu­ni­ty."Why haven't they shut down all their pipelines? This is the log­i­cal thing to do," Aboud told the T&T Guardian.He added: "The liveli­hoods of 52,000 fish­er­folk con­tin­ue to be at risk and every liv­ing thing is be­ing killed right now."

Aboud said "ab­solute­ly noth­ing" was be­ing done to deal with the im­pact of the spill and vir­tu­al­ly dis­missed the hir­ing of the Flori­da-based Oil Spill Re­sponse Ltd by the Gov­ern­ment. Of­fi­cials from the com­pa­ny ar­rived in the coun­try yes­ter­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said.

Aboud felt the big­ger prob­lem was find­ing the source of the spill. He claimed that the com­pa­nies' trans­mis­sion sys­tems were not shut down be­cause it was more prof­itable to con­tin­ue to pump oil than to shut down be­cause of a two or three per cent oil spill."The dam­age they are caus­ing will take decades to re­pair. The con­t­a­m­i­nant doesn't dis­ap­pear, it just goes out of sight," he said, in­di­cat­ing the long-term ef­fects.

His­to­ry of leaks

Asked to com­ment on Petrotrin's claim of sus­pect­ed sab­o­tage, he said: "Sab­o­tage is a very con­ve­nient ex­cuse for in­com­pe­tence and gross neg­li­gence."Aboud said in 2003, then chair­man of the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs, Pro­fes­sor John Agard, said there were 20,000 leaks in gas trans­mis­sion pipelines in the Gulf of Paria alone."Are the politi­cians say­ing those are 20,000 sab­o­tage leaks? What has any min­is­ter in any gov­ern­ment and any CEO in any state com­pa­ny done about these leaks?

"If I can see what was done, I would have com­fort in with­draw­ing the ac­cu­sa­tion of gross neg­li­gence," he said.Aboud said most state board mem­bers were po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees who had not sat­is­fied the cri­te­ria of com­pe­tence. He said fish­er­folk, the largest and old­est stake­hold­ers of the sea, were not rep­re­sent­ed on any state boards.

The hir­ing of a for­eign clean-up crew was not a emer­gency con­tin­gency plan but an act of help­less­ness, he added.Aboud said Fish­er­men & Friends of the Sea had pre­sent­ed an emer­gency re­sponse plan to the then gov­ern­ment in 2003 and it was ig­nored."It was a bet­ter plan than what we are see­ing now," he said.He said one of the main pro­pos­als was that all com­pa­nies in the en­er­gy sec­tor should fund emer­gency re­sponse equip­ment and get in­volved in re­solv­ing a cri­sis.

"But to­day, BP and BHP are sit­ting pret­ty say­ing that's Petrotrin's prob­lem."Mean­while, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Stephen Broad­bridge yes­ter­day sent out an ur­gent call for vol­un­teers to as­sist in clean­ing up birds af­fect­ed by the oil spill. Broad­bridge said his fel­low Pa­pa Bois Con­ser­va­tion di­rec­tor Marc de Ver­teuil, a T&T Guardian colum­nist, had been work­ing al­most sin­gle-hand­ed­ly to save pel­i­cans, skim­mers and oth­er sea birds since oil spills, be­gin­ning last Tues­day, dev­as­tat­ed parts of the south­west­ern coast­line.

"As we speak, Marc is down there now," he added.Broad­bridge, an hon­orary game war­den, said the scale of the spills was akin to a dis­as­ter but was be­ing un­der­es­ti­mat­ed and un­der­played."The re­sponse has been far too slow for some­thing of this scale. A lot of wildlife would have died and sunk to the bot­tom of the ocean," he said.

De Ver­teuil, with lim­it­ed re­sources and lit­tle as­sis­tance, has been col­lect­ing birds from the black­ened coast­line, tak­ing them ashore and care­ful­ly wash­ing each one with dish­wash­ing liq­uids and dry­ing them with pa­per tow­els."A lot of the birds have not been col­lect­ed be­cause there is no man­pow­er and a lot of those col­lect­ed have died," Broad­bridge re­port­ed.He said peo­ple were trained for this but none turned up at the scene.

"But more are get­ting stuck in the oil. We have an ap­peal on Face­book for soap, pa­per tow­els and vol­un­teers. We have col­lect­ed some but it's not enough."He said apart from Pa­pa Bois and one per­son from Petrotrin no one else has been help­ing.Broad­bridge said the group would al­so need help to trans­port birds from La Brea to the Wildlife Or­phan­age and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (WORC), Diego Mar­tin. So far they have on­ly been able to send two birds to the cen­tre.

He said dam­age-test­ing al­so need­ed to be done to de­ter­mine the ef­fect of the spill on fish and oth­er sea crea­tures, like plank­ton, shrimp and crus­tacean."Tox­ins from the oil could get in­to these crea­tures and the food chain and this can cause long-term health prob­lems," he warned.Broad­bridge re­ferred to the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co, which US gov­ern­ment stud­ies said caused lung dis­eases and oth­er ab­nor­mal­i­ties in dol­phins."There's no such thing as a to­tal clean-up," he said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist Nicole Bachan said it was aware of the con­ser­va­tion group's prob­lem and was work­ing on it.