SASCHA WIL­SON

San­ta Flo­ra res­i­dents, in­clud­ing chil­dren, are falling ill while their crops have been de­stroyed and their an­i­mals af­fect­ed af­ter an oil spill in the com­mu­ni­ty on Tues­day. 

While Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd has de­scribed the in­ci­dent at the cor­ner of Agapi­to and Well Roads as a mi­nor seep­age, res­i­dents say they are ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed. They say they are dizzy, nau­seous, and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing headaches and short­ness of breath.

Un­able to bear the fumes any longer, res­i­dents came out of their homes this morn­ing, to de­mand that a com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive meet with them and ad­dress their con­cerns.

Randy Ramjit said he ob­served the spill in his gar­den on the side of his house on Tues­day and re­port­ed it to com­pa­ny. While the com­pa­ny re­spond­ed, he said no con­cern has been shown for the health and well­be­ing of the res­i­dents. Ramjit said his wife fell ill and had to be tak­en to the hos­pi­tal on Wednes­day, while his chil­dren al­so are ill.

An­oth­er res­i­dent who gave her name as Ali­cia, said her two chil­dren, aged 15 and 9 years, are vom­it­ing and un­able to do their on­line class­es. Not­ing that the com­mu­ni­ty is flood prone, the res­i­dents are not sat­is­fied with the com­pa­ny just cov­er­ing the oil-soaked area with sand.

Ramjit said an­oth­er is­sue is that the ex­ca­va­tor used to cov­er the spill rup­tured wa­ter lines in the area, and they on­ly re­ceive pipe borne wa­ter once every three weeks.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um stat­ed that it was cur­rent­ly en­gaged in re­spond­ing to two sep­a­rate in­ci­dents at Agapi­to Trace, San­ta Flo­ra, and along the right of way of the Her­itage Trunk Pipelines at In­verene Road in Co­coyea.

"In both in­stances, which in­volved mi­nor seep­age from near­by fa­cil­i­ties, Her­itage ac­ti­vat­ed its Emer­gency/Oil Spill Re­sponse Pro­to­cols, which in­cludes im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pend­ing pump­ing op­er­a­tions, plug­ging and clamp­ing as­so­ci­at­ed pipelines, where ap­plic­a­ble. Clean-up op­er­a­tions and con­tain­ment were ex­pe­di­tious­ly com­menced and are on­go­ing," Her­itage re­port­ed in its state­ment.

The com­pa­ny stat­ed that its per­son­nel were in con­tact with per­sons im­pact­ed in the area of both in­ci­dents and were work­ing dili­gent­ly to en­sure their safe­ty and well-be­ing and min­i­mize im­pacts to them.

The com­pa­ny added that air qual­i­ty tests con­tin­ue to be con­duct­ed at both sites and the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and all reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies have been no­ti­fied.