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Monday, July 7, 2025

After boy falls into oil-slicked river

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20161023

En­er­gy Min­is­ter and La Brea MP Nicole Olivierre said she was dis­ap­point­ed with Petrotrin's de­lay in re­spond­ing to Vance Riv­er res­i­dents con­cerns about an oil spill in the riv­er.

Olivierre vis­it­ed the area and met with res­i­dents for the first time yes­ter­day since four-year-old Caleb Hart fell in­to the oil-pol­lut­ed riv­er near his Fitz Lane home last week Wednes­day. Res­i­dents claimed Petrotrin on­ly re­spond­ed to the oil spill af­ter Caleb fell in­to the riv­er al­though they re­port­ed the oil spill a month ago.

Speak­ing with re­porters near the oil-pol­lut­ed riv­er, Olivierre said: "I am cer­tain­ly very dis­ap­point­ed that is the case be­cause this is a se­ri­ous en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sue and Petrotrin needs to have a faster re­sponse time to events like this. When there are spills off­shore the re­sponse time has been quite rapid, so per­haps they seem to have fall­en back in their re­sponse time for oil spills on land. But I cer­tain­ly en­cour­age res­i­dents liv­ing with­in the con­stituen­cy with­in the oil pro­duc­ing ar­eas, if you do no­tice oil spills on land please make every ef­fort to con­tact the com­pa­ny or my of­fice."

Asked to com­ment on res­i­dents' con­cern about the in­ci­dent, she said: " When I came I was able to see first hand the ex­tent of the oil that is cur­rent­ly in the riv­er and I saw this bridge that the child was cross­ing, three feet wide and no rail­ing."

The min­is­ter said she has asked Petrotrin to in­stall a rail­ing on the bridge while they look fo­ra long term so­lu­tion.

Re­spond­ing to res­i­dents' health com­plaints, in­clud­ing feel­ing nau­seous and skin rash­es, she said: "I would ask Petrotrin to send a med­ical team to do an as­sess­ment of the res­i­dents to see what im­pact the oil spill has had on the res­i­dents and see what re­lief can be brought to them as quick­ly as pos­si­ble."

Told that Petrotrin stat­ed that the source of the oil may have been from an aban­doned well, she said: "I am aware that some wells were capped as a re­sult of the route for the high­way pass­ing through pro­duc­ing ar­eas. We cer­tain­ly have to in­ves­ti­gate and make sure they were prop­er­ly capped and that no leak­age is tak­ing place and have to re­think whether it was sen­si­ble to stymie pro­duc­ing wells."

Re­spond­ing to com­plaints by res­i­dents that they have not seen her since she was cam­paign­ing for elec­tions and at­tempts to reach ehr has been un­suc­cess­ful: " I have been bal­anc­ing be­tween the con­stituen­cy and my job as min­is­ter. I spent a lot of time trav­el­ling abroad so my time to be able to be with the res­i­dents has been lim­it­ed. I hope they would have been able to con­tact my of­fice and get fur­ther in­for­ma­tion and sup­port." The min­is­ter, who gave the res­i­dents her cell num­ber, said she was not aware of the oil spill un­til she saw it in the me­dia.


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