A truck be­gan pump­ing waste oil from a trib­u­tary to the Ca­paro Riv­er yes­ter­day, where gal­lons of the sub­stance were ap­par­ent­ly dumped over a two-month pe­ri­od.

The oil has not on­ly turned the wa­ter black but al­so af­fect­ed wildlife, in­clud­ing sev­er­al birds and caimans and plant life at In­her­i­tance Dri­ve, off the Ca­paro Val­ley Bras­so Road in Long­denville.

Fish farmer Chris­t­ian Pen­co, who rears tilapias at a near­by farm, is al­so be­ing af­fect­ed be­cause the oil-drenched birds are land­ing on his wa­ter tanks and as they at­tempt to feed on his fish the oil from their bod­ies are drip­ping in­to the tanks, caus­ing con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the wa­ter. Since the oil sur­faced in the wa­ter­course, Pen­co said he has no­ticed a sig­nif­i­cant amount of fish deaths on his farm.

Pen­co and Pas­tor Wayne Brown, of the In­her­i­tance In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­ter, which is lo­cat­ed op­po­site the trib­u­tary, com­plained that over the last two months they have made nu­mer­ous com­plaints to var­i­ous bod­ies but this has fall­en on deaf ears. Brown who con­ducts ser­vice on Sun­days says the fumes from the oil is very strong at times. He is very con­cerned about the neg­a­tive ef­fects the oil is hav­ing on the en­vi­ron­ment and the an­i­mals.

When T&T Guardian spoke with busi­ness­man Sieu­ra­jh Dass, who runs a near­by trans­port com­pa­ny, he de­nied be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the oil pol­lu­tion. How­ev­er, he said the trib­u­tary falls with­in his land and of­ten­times peo­ple would steal his equip­ment and dump garbage and oth­er things be­cause his prop­er­ty is not se­cured. He promised to send a truck to ab­sorb the oil and throw dry sand to help mit­i­gate the sit­u­a­tion.

But while Pen­co was hap­py that some work is be­ing done, he wants steps tak­en to en­sure the wa­ter­course is prop­er­ly cleaned and there is no re­cur­rence.

“What we want to do is put a stop to it,” he said.

A team from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty vis­it­ed the site on Mon­day. How­ev­er, EMA man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Hay­den Ro­mano could not be reached for a com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day.