Resh­ma Ra­goonath

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has served Petrotrin with two no­tices of vi­o­la­tions for en­vi­ron­men­tal breach­es aris­ing out of the oil spill af­fect­ing the south-west­ern penin­su­la.Yes­ter­day, the EMA, via a me­dia re­lease, said it had served two no­tices of vi­o­la­tions on Petrotrin for breach­es of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act Chap­ter 35:05 in re­sponse to the re­cent oil spills along the south-west coast­line. It said there were dif­fer­ent phas­es of ac­tion to be ini­ti­at­ed to deal with the vi­o­la­tions.

"The first phase treats with dis­as­ter re­sponse, and such ef­forts are on­go­ing and will con­tin­ue to be co-or­di­nat­ed by the Na­tion­al Oil Spill Con­tin­gency Com­mit­tee," the re­lease said.How­ev­er, the re­lease said the EMA, in con­sul­ta­tion with the in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee, "will now be ini­ti­at­ing the sec­ond phase of ac­tiv­i­ties to al­low for as­sess­ment, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and re­me­di­a­tion work." These as­sess­ments, the re­lease said, could be medi­um to long term.

In the re­lease, EMA chair­man Dr Al­lan Bachan said: "Ad­dress­ing non-com­pli­ance of en­vi­ron­men­tal re­quire­ments is a cru­cial step, and over the com­ing days the au­thor­i­ty will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the im­pacts of this oil spill and rig­or­ous­ly en­force its laws through ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion."

Bachan al­so said the leg­isla­tive process would be ini­ti­at­ed at this stage. He stressed that the "EMA main­tains its stead­fast com­mit­ment to en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and will work as­sid­u­ous­ly to en­sure prop­er re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and re­me­di­a­tion of the af­fect­ed sur­round­ings."

The EMA, ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, did pre­lim­i­nary aer­i­al and on-the-ground as­sess­ments of all the af­fect­ed sites on Sat­ur­day and fur­ther site vis­its are ex­pect­ed to be done "to ob­tain pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ments with tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise from the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs and oth­er agen­cies."

Bachan said since the ini­tial re­port­ing of the oil spill, "the EMA has and con­tin­ues to as­sess the ex­tent and grav­i­ty of en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact, which will in­form the method/s to be em­ployed to­ward the re­me­di­a­tion or restora­tion of im­pact­ed sites, in­clud­ing the con­tain­ment of any wastes, un­til all spilled hy­dro­car­bon and oth­er waste gen­er­at­ed have been col­lect­ed." Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said, oth­er ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures as may be nec­es­sary to pre­vent or mit­i­gate ad­verse ef­fects on hu­man health and the en­vi­ron­ment would be as­sessed.

The first of 11 oil spills was de­tect­ed on De­cem­ber 17. Petrotrin has since sug­gest­ed that sab­o­tage led to two of them. A pre­lim­i­nary re­port on the ini­tial spill at Pointe-a-Pierre on De­cem­ber 17 by a team of Petrotrin of­fi­cials, how­ev­er, has sug­gest­ed that poor main­te­nence prac­tice may have been a fac­tor.

Com­mu­ni­ties lin­ing the south-west­ern coast­line were se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the oil spills and hun­dreds of fish­er­folk are un­able to make a liv­ing in the Gulf of Paria be­cause of the oil spill. They have been call­ing on Petrotrin to meet with them and dis­cuss com­pen­sa­tion for their lost earn­ings.