Resh­ma Ra­goonath

A sec­ond oil leak has pol­lut­ed the Guaracara Riv­er in less than five months, mere days be­fore Christ­mas.The leak was de­tect­ed days af­ter the an­niver­sary of the dis­as­trous La Brea oil spill.Yes­ter­day oil from the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery leaked in­to the Guaracara Riv­er and Mara­bel­la res­i­dents are fear­ful they may not have a yule­tide to cel­e­brate.

Al­ready one res­i­dent, Gle­nis Quashie-Dal­rym­ple, had to seek med­ical treat­ment yes­ter­day for res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems she said was caused by fumes from the oil-cov­ered riv­er which flows be­hind her Silk Cot­ton Street, Mara­bel­la, home.She said over the week­end a high sul­phuric smell was ev­i­dent in the neigh­bour­hood and her two younger chil­dren – ages sev­en and nine – com­plained of feel­ing un­well.

"In the night they would be cough­ing but they do not have any run­ny nose or fever. For the last two days we no­tice a high sul­phur smell and my son was vom­it­ing," she said.Quashie-Dal­rym­ple, a po­lice of­fi­cer, said she was okay un­til yes­ter­day morn­ing when she be­gan feel­ing sick. She sought treat­ment at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and had to use the neb­u­liz­er to as­sist her with her breath­ing.

She said when she woke up yes­ter­day morn­ing she was stunned to see the con­di­tion of the wa­ter in the Guaracara Riv­er.She added: "When we woke up I opened the kitchen win­dow fac­ing the riv­er and I looked out."I no­ticed the riv­er was the same as it was the morn­ing of the oil spill (in Ju­ly). At that time (yes­ter­day morn­ing) tide was high and the bam­boo was hang­ing over the riv­er and it had oil.

"That is what make me re­alise it was an oil spill. The smell was strong." She said since the Ju­ly oil spill res­i­dents of­ten saw oil float­ing spo­rad­i­cal­ly down the Guaracara Riv­er, es­pe­cial­ly when rain fell."How­ev­er," she said, "it was more se­vere than the last time. Every time the rain falls you would get oil com­ing down the riv­er for half day and then it would clear up but to­day (yes­ter­day) the smell is bad."

Quashie-Dal­rym­ple said if the sit­u­a­tion did not im­prove she did not ex­pect to have a good Christ­mas.Sixth Street Ex­ten­sion res­i­dent, Isaac Ram­paul, 69, shared Quashie-Dal­rym­ple's view. He said he did not know what to ex­pect for Christ­mas now that the oil spill had oc­curred.He said in Ju­ly res­i­dents were not al­lowed to cook and now with Christ­mas mere days away, he was not sure what was go­ing to hap­pen.

Yes­ter­day a pun­gent sul­phur smell was thick in the air when the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed Silk Cot­ton Street and Bayshore, Mara­bel­la.The riv­er bank was caked with fresh oil and the wa­ter, at var­i­ous points, was cov­ered with thick oil, ac­com­pa­nied by an nau­se­at­ing smell.

More in­fo

In Ju­ly over 5,000 bar­rels of slop oil es­caped from a tank at the re­fin­ery and made its way in­to the Guaracara Riv­er, caus­ing con­fu­sion for the res­i­dents.Petrotrin in­curred sig­nif­i­cant loss­es fol­low­ing that spill. The Mara­bel­la spill came on the heels of the De­cem­ber 17, 2013 spill in Mara­bel­la.

Petrotrin: Over­flow con­tained

Petrotrin has con­firmed it is treat­ing with a new oil leak that has made its way in­to the Guaracara Riv­er.Last evening Gillian Fri­day, Petrotrin cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, in re­sponse to queries from the T&T Guardian said, via e-mail, Petrotrin of­fi­cials re­spond­ed to "a small leak in its heavy oil sys­tem at the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, stem­ming the over­flow and con­tain­ing the rem­nants that had es­caped in­to the neigh­bour­ing Guaracara Riv­er."

Fri­day said on Sun­day "Petrotrin's first re­spon­ders con­tained the over­flow with­in the re­fin­ery and in­stalled con­tain­ment booms along the riv­er."She said vac­u­um trucks were al­so mo­bilised for im­me­di­ate clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties.Fri­day as­sured that "no oil has es­caped in­to the sea."She added that in ex­er­cis­ing cau­tion "Petrotrin of­fi­cials al­so ini­ti­at­ed air-qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing in the neigh­bour­ing Mara­bel­la com­mu­ni­ty. This mon­i­tor­ing is on­go­ing."

Fri­day said Petrotrin had not­ed re­cent re­ports re­lat­ing to med­ical is­sues al­leged to have arisen from the slop oil leak at Guaracara and the cor­po­rate re­sponse to the spill "in­clud­ed the pro­vi­sion of med­ical ser­vices to a num­ber of res­i­dents of Mara­bel­la who ac­cessed the fa­cil­i­ties made avail­able and fol­low-up care to per­sons where this was re­quired."

She said the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued its pro­gramme of fol­low-up med­ical screen­ing which con­tin­ued to be avail­able to per­sons with med­ical is­sues that may be re­lat­ed to the Ju­ly slop oil leak.