THE Department of Environmental Planning and Protection will start assessing a Bahamas Power & Light diesel spill in North Andros within a week, nearly 20 months after large quantities of oil reportedly leaked there. Concerned residents fear their groundwater supply may be contaminated.
By EARYEL BOWLEG
Tribune Staff Reporter
ebowleg@tribunemedia.net
THE Department of Environmental Planning and Protection will start assessing a Bahamas Power & Light diesel spill in North Andros within a week, nearly 20 months after large quantities of oil reportedly leaked there.
“We need to see what is going on first to be able to determine if BPL has complied with the law or not complied with the law,” DEPP Director Dr Rhianna Neely-Murphy said yesterday. “So once we conduct our site assessments, we will be able to get further information.”
It is not clear when DEPP was notified about the leak. Under the Environmental Planning and Protection Act, those who own, operate or control premises involving a pollutant spill must notify DEPP, implement an approved contingency plan and work to minimize the threat to human health or the environment.
Randy Butler, the president and a director of Daran Corporation Holdings, a company suing BPL over the leak, expressed outrage yesterday at how long it has taken officials to address the issue, which some fear threatens the environment.
“You have two oil leaks,” he said yesterday, “one was in 2019, the other in 2022. Both were reported to you. If you’re going now to do it when there are possible damages, irreparable damage to the water table and possibly, in fact, people, I don’t know how that is. What would be the purpose of going now? I mean, it’s never too late, but what would you do if you found out that this stuff is already in the water table and moving away to create issues? What do you do?”
Mr Butler said the media’s coverage of the leak pushed officials to address the problem, calling this “sad” and “very bad optics”.
In an affidavit he filed in June, he alleged that he spoke to top DEPP officials about the matter last year, but got no response.
Diesel spills near water bodies can pose significant challenges. The longer it takes to perform remediation activities, the chance increases that the substance would migrate through soil or groundwater and spread.
“I don’t know if they’ve been now ordered to come or they were not ordered to come before, or Androsians are not that important to them,” Mr Butler said.
“This should have been a simple matter to resolve due to the nature of what are the gallons of diesel fuel.”
Marva Miller, the owner of a property also affected by the spill, said her brother collected diesel from the ground after an earlier spill.
She said she would hire a lawyer.
“I will because I know the land is contaminated with diesel spill and all that stuff,” she said. “If anything happens, we could lose our building, and it’s not good for the building, period.”
BPL, which did not previously disclose the leak, declined to comment on Monday, citing ongoing litigation.
Yesterday, Attorney General Ryan Pinder said his office had not been engaged on the matter.
In May, Daran Corporation Holdings filed a lawsuit that accuses BPL of failing to inform the public about the “serious health risks” associated with the diesel spill.
Comments
Sickened 9 months ago
Just another disgrace by our governance. And we celebrate 50 years of what? Corruption, laziness and incompetence?
ExposedU2C 9 months ago
Snake, FOCOL and Shell execs in The Bahamas should all be charged with cleaning up these oil spills that have occurred near BPL fuel storage facilities in the family islands. And they should be ordered by our government through the courts to do so by a date certain or face criminal prosecution.
ThisIsOurs 9 months ago
This is a bad comedy. Cabinet knew about this spill for more than a year?? Again?? This needs to be an offence witu with legal and financial ramifications for any cabinet Minister to withhold any information potentially impacting public health Nobody in cabinet could believably say there was a notice floating around about an oil spill possibly affecting the water table in ANDROS, ANDROS, what was the fresh water source for Nasaau and "I didnt know". They can play word games with "well, no complaint was filed", but thats it.
Repost
"Hubert Ingraham discontinued barging of water from Andros correct? That aside will BPL cover the cost of lab work for persons in the affected area? I didnt see any indication of the time between when the spill happened and BPL said nothing and the time it was discovered on private land (weird Fitzgerald is a senior advisor to the PM when the administration hides another instance of people unknowingly bathing in and drinking fuel). Where is the Minister of Health?"
ThisIsOurs 9 months ago
Does anyone remember Erin Brockovich? The movie Julia Roberts made famous about oil executives poisoning groundwater in some small US town and trying to cover it up?
I remember watching that movie in horror and thinking how could these money grubbing worms do this to human beings, children even? To find out that the people who was dressed up and smiling brightly in their finest to all those 50 year gala balls just a month ago knew this was happening and have done nothing, it's too much for the brain to comprehend. (And these the same people who have thousands walking through 3-4ft of water in Pinewood redeveloped swamp everytime it rain for more than an hour)
Do we really believe Cambridge didnt know and didnt give this report to the PM? He had to know, they tried to clean it up. And if they tried to launch a cleanup operation would he not mention to the PM in their biweekly meeting that this could be really bad if we dont act?
And they said nothing
Can an international court to investigate the running of this country. Cuz we cant seem to get off this train. Didnt Papa Doc go before a world court for what he did to Haiti?
ThisIsOurs 9 months ago
And to be clear, there's no doubt in my mind that it's not Cambridge who decided not to inform the public. I posted on another BPL story, "politics in this country trumps common sense, good governance and sometimes the law". And dont let someone with long political campaign dollars be involved they could have an operation to recruit and sexually abuse multiples of young girls in the inner city and noone would say anything, the police wouldnt even intrude... oops aint that already happen?
ThisIsOurs 9 months ago
CNN January 2023 -
Posted this excerpt some time back, noting the parallels of sheer incompetence. I dont know what to say... it's like ground hog day.
For YEARS, residents in the northern Indian city of Joshimath have complained to local officials that their homes are sinking Now authorities are being forced to take action, evacuating nearly 100 families in the last week and expediting the arrival of experts to determine the cause.
Cracks running through the city are now so wide that hundreds of homes are no longer habitable, and some fear that India could lose a key gateway to religious pilgrimages and tourist expeditions on nearby mountain trails
As of Thursday, cracks were present in 760 buildings and 589 people had been evacuated, according to a bulletin issued by the district administration. ....
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami visited the affected areas LAST Saturday, INSPECTING the homes of residents who fear the structures may collapse.
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