Almost all of the oil spilled in the port of Marsh Habour, Abaco last Monday has been cleaned-up, according to Pat Bain, operations manager of BayChem Spill Technologies.
Mr. Bain told The Bahama Journal that his team will remain on the island for another week to monitor a segment of mangrove saturated in oil.
Authorities said an estimated 2,000 gallons of diesel spilled into waters off the port while a Bahamas Electricity Corporation tanker was being transported onboard a contracted vessel from Grand Cay to Nassau.
The spill occurred when the vessel accidentally tilted while the workers tried to reposition it using heavy equipment, an official at BEC had reported.
“At this particular stage approximately 98 percent of the oil has already been recovered or removed from the area where it spilled,” Mr. Bain said.
“We are now working along the creek where initially a small portion of the mangrove was damaged and we are still accessing it to see if any damage was done to the mangrove’s eco-system. That area is contained and we are just monitoring it and we will be continuing that process for the next couple of weeks.”
According to Mr. Bain, a 150-foot containment boom, a floating barrier used to contain oil or hydrocarbon, has been placed around the compromised area and will stay in place for the next two weeks.
He also reported that a large number of birds, butterflies, fish and other marine creatures have died since the spill.
BEC General Manager Kevin Basden said Wednesday that the corporation has had preliminary discussions with the owners of the vessel that was transporting the tanker on the day of the mishap as part of an investigation into the matter.
While large oil spills are rare in The Bahamas, Mr. Bain said that the public should be sensitized to the dangers of spills.
“The idea is to act quickly because we tend to ignore it when it is only a small quantity,” Mr. Bain explained.
“But in this particular instance the residents of Abaco were very much concerned because of the significant volume of oil that was in the area. Once we came in on Monday we were able to contain the spill within a couple of hours of us being called to the scene and it has been contained since.”
Marsh Harbour Administrator Reevis Rolle said the oil spill allowed officials to test their disaster management plan.
“We do have a disaster management plan and a part of that plan deals with oil spills,” Mr. Rolle said.
“So what happened there was we had an opportunity to implement that oil spill plan and we are now in the process of doing a postmortem along with the experts [from BayChem] to determine what worked and what did not work and what else we would need to implement or how we would need to amend the plan.”
Mr. Bain assured that his group used only the most environment-friendly products during the cleanup and added that a report will be released to the Department of Environmental Health within the next three days.
Royanne Forbes, The Bahama Journal
