Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Close to 400,000 gal­lons of oil and pol­lut­ed wa­ter have been vac­u­umed in­to frac tanks in To­ba­go, from the over­turned barge that ran aground off the coast of Cove on Feb­ru­ary 7.

Guardian Me­dia has con­firmed that there are 24 tanks on the is­land. To date, 17 are filled.

Mean­while, the Bonaire gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day said the oil spill was now pos­ing a “se­ri­ous threat to both hu­mans and na­ture” on the Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean is­land.

In a state­ment, the gov­ern­ment said parts of Bonaire’s east coast, in­clud­ing Sorobon, Lac and La­gun, have been con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with oil and vul­ner­a­ble man­grove, fish and coral ecosys­tems are at risk.

“The emer­gency ser­vices are now com­mit­ted to a rapid and ef­fec­tive cleanup of the oil slicks,” a state­ment said.

There was no im­me­di­ate in­for­ma­tion on the size of the slicks that had reached Bonaire’s east coast, but so­cial me­dia posts by res­i­dents showed pic­tures of oil-stained sand, reefs and birds at some beach­es.

Yes­ter­day, a sup­pli­er of the frac tanks, who is cur­rent­ly in To­ba­go, told Guardian Me­dia that wa­ter and oth­er par­ti­cles are vac­u­umed along with the oil in­to the tanks.

A frac tank is a steel tank used for stor­ing var­i­ous sub­stances such as pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts, chem­i­cals, ma­nure, saline wa­ter, and prop­pants. It can hold large ca­pac­i­ties of liq­uids or solids. These tanks come in var­i­ous sizes, rang­ing from 8,400 gal­lons to 21,000 gal­lons.

Con­sid­er­ing the vol­umes of oil still con­tained out at sea and even more oil de­posits stuck to the shore­line and on rocks, To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art said the team was pre­pared to use a barge if ca­pac­i­ty on land ran out. But for now, Stew­art said the 24 tanks, cou­pled with con­tain­ment cells at Stud­ley Park, should be suf­fi­cient.

“Based on the sea­ward op­er­a­tions, there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that it may be aug­ment­ed by a barge when that op­er­a­tion gets in­to the pic­ture if it be­comes nec­es­sary,” Stew­art told Guardian Me­dia. “They hold at least 20,000 gal­lons, each of them. The THA has made arrange­ments to dig cells up at the Stud­ley Park area to deal with the over­flow or over­load.”

He added, “We have en­dured a steep climb, and we are on a plateau now where we are en­joy­ing a lev­el of suc­cess. We have it un­der con­trol, and it’s on­ly a mat­ter of time.”

Stew­art ad­mit­ted that there are se­ri­ous chal­lenges in the Lam­beau area. “I know there are some dif­fi­cult ar­eas along the shore­line that are very stub­born be­cause of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and util­is­ing the gul­ly suck­ers-type ap­pa­ra­tus to ex­tract the oil from those coves in the beach area we are now work­ing on in the Lam­beau area.

“Be­cause these schools re­main closed, we are work­ing very hard and push­ing it so that we could have these things achieved. Al­so, air and wa­ter qual­i­ties in the area are con­tin­ued to be mon­i­tored with a com­pre­hen­sive way in how we ap­proach.”

He said they will hold dis­cus­sions on how the is­land will deal with restor­ing af­fect­ed ar­eas at the man­grove in Low­lands near the Mag­dale­na Beach and Golf Re­sort.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries has com­plet­ed the ini­tial sur­vey of the wrecked ves­sel. The sur­vey col­lect­ed da­ta on wa­ter con­di­tions, un­der­wa­ter topog­ra­phy, and seabed im­agery us­ing ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy.

This da­ta will be used to cre­ate maps and charts show­ing wa­ter depth and po­ten­tial dan­gers around the wreck. These maps will help safe­ly bring sup­port ves­sels to the area.

At the same time, the re­sponse team will de­ploy the NOFI Cur­rent Buster Tech­nol­o­gy, which is part of the oil con­tain­ment sys­tem. This tech­nol­o­gy is de­signed to deal with the oil spill and re­store the af­fect­ed ma­rine area.

Up to yes­ter­day, the Lam­beau An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry and Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary schools re­mained closed. How­ev­er, in a re­lease, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) said they con­duct­ed test­ing at both schools which showed the air qual­i­ty ex­ceed­ed rec­om­mend­ed safe­ty stan­dards, in­di­cat­ing that out­door ac­tiv­i­ties can pro­ceed safe­ly.