No oil leak at Studley Park—TEMA

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

There is no hy­dro­car­bon leak at the Stud­ley Park dump. To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art and Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith B Yis­rael con­firmed this yes­ter­day, deny­ing me­dia re­ports of an en­vi­ron­men­tal haz­ard caused by al­leged im­prop­er dis­pos­al of the waste col­lect­ed dur­ing the Feb­ru­ary 7 oil spill.

Their re­sponse comes fol­low­ing a re­port on Sun­day on con­cerns of the stor­age of the oil and pos­si­ble threats to the en­vi­ron­ment and its sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

But fol­low­ing a sur­veil­lance flight yes­ter­day, TEMA told Guardian Me­dia there was no leak, or seep­age or any oth­er threat de­tect­ed.

Stew­art said the base­line rec­om­mend­ed and ap­proved by the EMA had not been com­pro­mised.

He re­it­er­at­ed the lo­ca­tion was on­ly a tem­po­rary stor­age site un­til a dis­pos­al plan is sort­ed out.

Stew­art said, “There is noth­ing to be con­cerned about, as the im­me­di­ate plan they put in place, it’s still at work. They dug these pits, had them lined with plas­tic and they are car­ry­ing out their func­tion.

“As it is right now there is no dan­ger. I un­der­stand the bar­ri­er built around it with dirt is still in­tact and the oil is not breached.”

A source told Guardian Me­dia while the lin­ing—placed to pre­vent the waste from seep­ing in the soil—may have shift­ed due to length, the bunker fu­el’s stor­age hasn’t been com­pro­mised.

How­ev­er, the longer it’s stored there the greater the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an en­vi­ron­men­tal threat be­comes.

Mean­while, the deputy chief sec­re­tary said chief sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine was aware of the re­ports and would de­cide the next best step re­gard­ing his re­sponse.

Al­though the site has been cleared of haz­ards by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke wants the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency (EMA) to in­ter­vene.

Duke said, “I’m call­ing up­on the EMA in To­ba­go to ini­ti­ate le­gal pro­ceed­ings and its sub­si­dies and its agents for not fol­low­ing the rule of law. I’m call­ing on the RMA to do the right thing. The law not good for one and not good for the oth­er.”

Duke con­demned the EMA for not tak­ing the lead in this sort of waste stor­age, leav­ing To­ba­go to strug­gle with its fu­ture dis­pos­al.

In Au­gust, Au­gus­tine told Guardian Me­dia for months he had been con­cerned that emer­gency funds might be de­layed through­out the rainy sea­son as the THA awaits the re­sources to prop­er­ly dis­pose of the waste.

At that time, he said he hoped the rains would not cause the con­tain­ment cells to over­flow.