Ke­jan Haynes

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) says the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary is re­turn­ing to some lev­el of nor­mal­cy, one week af­ter an oily sub­stance was dis­cov­ered in a drain in its carpark just off the Uri­ah But­ler High­way.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to ex­act­ly what was the sub­stance dis­cov­ered at the site, with the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs ex­pect­ed to pro­duce a re­port on this by the end of the month.

The source of the spill has not been de­ter­mined but the like­li­hood re­mains hu­man dump­ing, as there are no pipelines in the area.

Of­fi­cials gave mem­bers of the me­dia a tour of the area yes­ter­day. Oil booms were still on site.

EMA Re­gion­al Co­or­di­na­tor, Emer­gency Re­sponse & In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit Steve Lal­be­har­ry said the booms haven’t been re­placed all week, which is a good thing.

“This is in­dica­tive that no fur­ther sub­stance has en­tered in­to the en­vi­ron­ment from this point and all con­tain­ment was very suc­cess­ful. That re­al­ly is im­por­tant,” Lal­be­har­ry said.

There were al­so no ma­jor re­ports of loss of wildlife. There were many con­cerns raised about crabs, es­pe­cial­ly those which are eat­en by the Scar­let Ibis which in­hab­it the swamp.

“We did ob­serve some dead fish­es from about day two, Au­gust 12. The last ob­ser­va­tion of dead fish­es would have been in the evening of Au­gust 13,” Lal­be­har­ry said.

“We have no re­ports of any wildlife, deaths or dis­tress, stress or im­pacts from this in­ci­dent.”

The IMA, Forestry Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment have all co­or­di­nat­ed to man­age the spill.

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion which can help with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is asked to send videos and pho­tographs to EMA’s What­sApp 367-8824, Email: com­plaints@ema.co.tt or call the EMA’s emer­gency re­sponse mo­bile for spills at 680-9588.