Resh­ma Ra­goonath

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) will soon serve Petrotrin with a no­tice of non-com­pli­ance with en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions aris­ing out of the oil spill that be­gan on De­cem­ber 17 along the south-west­ern penin­su­la.En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, con­firmed that the EMA will be serv­ing Petrotrin with the no­tice with­in a cou­ple of days.

"There has been a breach, there have been en­vi­ron­men­tal breach­es that have oc­curred with this oil spill, and the EMA will be tak­ing the nec­es­sary le­gal ac­tion in ac­cor­dance with the law against Petrotrin. There has been a breach and they will be served short­ly with a no­tice of vi­o­la­tion," Singh said.Singh's com­ment came even as La Brea res­i­dents yes­ter­day staged demon­stra­tions to ex­press their dis­ap­point­ment over the way the state-owned com­pa­ny has been treat­ing them since the spill af­fect­ed their dai­ly lives.

The no­tice at­tracts a dai­ly fine that could run in ex­cess of US$50,000.This will add to the grow­ing list of ex­pens­es to the em­bat­tled oil com­pa­ny, which is al­so fac­ing claims of com­pen­sa­tion from af­fect­ed fish­er­men and res­i­dents.

EMA, IMA mon­i­tor ma­rine life

Singh told the T&T Guardian he met with the com­mit­tee that was set up to mon­i­tor the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of the oil spill. The EMA, In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) and oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal agents form part of that com­mit­tee, Singh ex­plained.He said since the oil spill oc­curred on De­cem­ber 17 and spread to La Brea on De­cem­ber 18, the EMA and IMA has been up­dat­ing him dai­ly on the progress of clean-up op­er­a­tions.

"The IMA will be mon­i­tor­ing the im­pact of this oil spill, in the short medi­um and long-term, on our ma­rine life, " Singh said."There will be cer­tain reg­u­la­to­ry and en­force­ment is­sues that the EMA will deal with (as it per­tains to) Petrotrin. It is re­al­ly a tragedy that this oil spill is now im­pact­ing up­on our en­vi­ron­ment and we in­tend to con­tin­ue the mon­i­tor­ing of this im­pact while the reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies deal with the en­force­ment is­sues and the penal­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with that against Petrotrin."

On Mon­day, fish­er­men based at Ota­heite Bay took me­dia per­son­nel on a boat tour to the pro­tect­ed Aripero Wet­lands and Dow Man­grove, Rousil­lac, where the oil spill has start­ed to in­trude.Yes­ter­day, Singh said he was dis­tressed by the pos­si­ble en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age that the oil spill might in­flict on the eco-sen­si­tive en­vi­ron­ment in the pro­tect­ed wet­land.

"I am very con­cerned with the in­tru­sion of the oil in­to the man­grove as it im­pacts up­on the birds and aquat­ic life in the man­grove and the whole ques­tion of the im­pact of the oil spill on the bio­di­ver­si­ty and al­so on the ma­rine life in the area," he lament­ed.He de­scribed the oil spill sit­u­a­tion as a "tragedy."