The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

RESIDENTS fear the groundwater in Nicholls Town, North Andros, has been contaminated with diesel, potentially harming the community’s health after a Bahamas Power & Light pipeline leaked large quantities of fuel.

BPL did not report the leak to the public, and officials would not discuss the status of remediation efforts yesterday, citing ongoing litigation.

Daran Corporation Holdings is suing the power company, alleging its property was contaminated with diesel following the spill.

“BPL had a leak of diesel on their North Andros Power Station, and it seeped underground, and what you have is a plume of diesel that’s moving underground,” former Environment Minister Romi Ferreira said yesterday.

 “It’s the diesel that came from the power station. The rub is the same, that there are residents nearby who use groundwater as their potable water so it’s a danger to them. It’s also a danger to the nearby shoreline where there’s a beach.”

 “There’s a fuel line that runs from the North Andros Beach Hotel right from the beach, and it extends first underground and then it rises above ground, and it goes all the way to the North Andros Power Station, and that fuel line leaked, and as a result of that leak, the groundwater in that area is contaminated.”

 Mr Ferreira, who previously represented the company suing BPL but is not its current lawyer, could not verify whether the pipeline is still leaking. He said BPL made efforts to repair it.

 “The reason why I think it’s not still leaking is because diesel is an expensive product,” he said. “You can’t continually lose that in those large volumes and that not affect your bottom line.”

 Mr Ferreira said he examined the fuel leakage with his “own hands” and took photos of the spill.

 “Sure enough, there are excavated pits on the site,” he said, “and you can see diesel floating on the water.”

 He said everyone using groundwater in Nicholls Town could be affected by the spill, though this depends on which direction the oil moved.

 “Once it’s on the water table, even though you can’t see it, it’s still moving around,” he said. “It’s still subject to tidal influence. People who have wells create a pressure that draws that water to them, and in drawing it to them, they draw the plume. The wells suck waters out of the rock, and that suction has a suction cone by which anything that the well is pumping will draw in, and if you do it long enough, you’ll get it.”

 Mr Ferreira was instrumental in the passage of the Environmental Planning and Protection Act 2019, which governs responses to spills and accidental releases.

 Department of Environmental Planning and Protection officials could not be reached for comment before press time.

 Mr Ferreira believes BPL tried to remediate the spill, but stopped.

 “It would be unfair to say that they didn’t try to because when you go to the site, you can see what you would call remediation equipment,” he said. “You would see little tanks set up around the place. You would see wells. You would see where they excavated trenches so they could get at the diesel to pump it because you can’t pump it without a hole. You could see where they started to do it, but for some reason, they stopped. It’s not resolved because the diesel is still on the water table.”

 Mr Ferreira said he did not test the wells to determine whether people had drunk contaminated water.

 “I do know there is an adjacent community called Nicholls Town because the power station is built in Nicholls Town, and I do know there are guest houses all along that pipeline,” he said.