Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties fol­low­ing a hy­dro­car­bon leak in the riv­er course from Tarou­ba to Mara­bel­la are al­most com­plet­ed, con­firmed Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd, in a press re­lease yes­ter­day.

The com­pa­ny added that re­sponse crews have be­gun tran­si­tion­ing to site restora­tion work while air qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing is on­go­ing.

How­ev­er, it stat­ed that pre­lim­i­nary re­sults in­di­cate that air qual­i­ty was with­in ac­cept­able lev­els. Mean­while, the com­pa­ny pro­vid­ed a shut­tle ser­vice for chil­dren who were among 57 Mara­bel­la res­i­dents tem­porar­i­ly evac­u­at­ed from Bayshore last Fri­day, to at­tend school yes­ter­day.

The chil­dren were trans­port­ed from Roy­al Ho­tel in San Fer­nan­do to their re­spec­tive schools. One of the res­i­dents who is stay­ing at the ho­tel was grate­ful for the as­sis­tance as she not­ed that sev­er­al schools be­gan term test yes­ter­day. An­oth­er res­i­dent said they were com­fort­able with the arrange­ments thus far and may like­ly re­turn home to­day.

In a re­lease on Sun­day, Her­itage stat­ed that the leak, which was traced to a 12-inch trunk pipeline, has since been re­paired.

While sat­is­fied with the cleanup op­er­a­tions thus far, many res­i­dents of Bayshore were con­cerned about the im­pact on their liveli­hoods and the en­vi­ron­ment.

A res­i­dent re­port­ed los­ing sev­er­al ducks and chick­ens that fed near the river­bank. Ger­ard Bab­wah, a crab catch­er who re­lies on the man­grove for his dai­ly in­come, says the spill is pre­vent­ing him from earn­ing a liv­ing. Hope­ful he would re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion, the fa­ther of one ex­plained, "I does catch crab for a liv­ing. I go in the sea and go in the mar­ket and sell crab every Sun­day. Every day I might sell a lil $300, $400 in crab and on Sun­day I sure to sell a lil $1,000 and $1,200 in crab—and it have no crab. I does set in the (riv­er) bank, and the oil—I not go­ing to catch no crab for no­body to eat no oil crab,” Bab­wah said. De­spite the en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter, some res­i­dents con­tin­ued prepa­ra­tions for St Pe­ter’s Day—a long-stand­ing tra­di­tion for fish­er­men across the coun­try.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area on Sun­day, vil­lagers were at the fish fa­cil­i­ty set­ting up for the event. Res­i­dent Na­tal­ie Mo­hammed said, “We not hav­ing no boat race this year due to the oil in the wa­ter be­cause if that en­gine pull that oil, it will have prob­lems. Clean-up go­ing good so far, but the oil in the man­grove—and it have the birds and thing that does be nest­ing there. Crabs and every­thing too.”

Mean­while, the com­pa­ny stat­ed that Min­is­ter of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Ernesto Ke­sar along with Mara­bel­la West coun­cil­lor John Michael Al­i­bo­cas re­vis­it­ed the af­fect­ed ar­eas and met with res­i­dents at the ho­tel.