The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

GORDON Craig, managing director of Rubis (Bahamas), said his company is seeking a “much needed” meeting with environmental officials and representatives from the Sandyport Development Company (SDC) as they “work to communicate the exact extent” of the feared Sandyport service station fuel leak.

Those environmental officials include the Environmental Remediation and Response Laboratory (EMRAD) and the Department of Environmental Health Services (DEHS).

Mr Craig was responding to claims made by SDC President Garth Buckner which alleged that a crack in the bulkhead of a Rubis (Bahamas) fuel line positioned at the rear-eastern side of the Sandyport marina was the source of a feared fuel leak first reported last week.

“It is important that we get all the information together, get the facts together and find the most transparent and effective way forward. There is a lot of communication out there and those communications imply a great deal,” Mr Craig told The Tribune yesterday.

He added: “What we wanted to do from the beginning is communicate the facts, be transparent and get everyone on the same page.”

According to Mr Craig, he has already written all the necessary groups to ask for a formal meeting. He said that to this point, many of the things communicated in the press have not established “transparent facts”.

“Rubis, SDC and the government’s environmental representatives have been in communication from the start, that is the communication needed to rectify the matter in a transparent way,” Mr Craig said.

Neither he nor Rubis have admitted or acknowledged that a fuel line was the source of the feared fuel leak.

However, he has sustained throughout this entire ordeal that his company was doing everything to correct the matter. Mr Craig initially stated that once notified, representatives from Rubis were dispatched to the Sandyport site, shutting down the station’s pumps and carrying out extensive testing at the site.

“There were no issues or leaks observed at the time,” Mr Craig said last week when concerns over the fuel leak were first raised. “We went through all the necessary protocols and concluded that whatever issues existed, it wasn’t as a result of Rubis.

“However, beyond that, we will continue to monitor the situation in the coming days,” he said during a previous interview.

When approached by The Tribune yesterday, Environment Minister Kenred Dorsett declined to comment.

Fears about the Sandyport leak have emerged as Rubis is in a court battle over a 2012 underground fuel leak in the Marathon constituency.

According to the BEST Commission, the fuel release of 12,000 gallons of unleaded gasoline was observed in late December 2012 by operator Fiorente Management, and reported to Rubis on January 19, 2013.

However, area residents have maintained to The Tribune that they were kept in the dark for years over possible risks from the spill.

An independent report into the matter found that residents in that area were exposed to potentially harmful chemicals, including cancer-causing benzene.