The Tribune

By DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

ACTIVISTS say no clean up is being done at the Equinor oil spill site where an estimated 55,000 barrels of oil were released at its South Riding Point facility in East Grand Bahama during Hurricane Dorian.

Environmental representatives of Save the Bays and Waterkeepers Bahamas visited the site yesterday to assess the area and to see if cleanup operations had resumed.

“Nothing is being done out there – it is so reprehensible,” said Joseph Darville, of Save the Bays, on returning from a four-hour assessment of the affected forest near the oil terminal.

Mr Darville said that vegetation, particularly the native fern, “is growing back thick covering a lot of the oil sitting on the ground.”

Rashema Ingraham, of Waterkeepers Bahamas, said they conducted an eco-risk assessment in the area to identify threats and suggest a remediation plan.

They collected samples and have hired an expert assessor who will later provide a review of those samples.

She said: “Because it’s ongoing and we have no results yet it would be premature to comment further, especially without expert review. We’ve hired an expert assessor to provide his opinion based on our samples. When all is completed, we can speak further about what we’ve done. However, there was no visible presence of cleanup or remediation/replanting exercises being done by Equinor while we were there.”

Equinor officials this week said that they remain committed to the cleanup operation.

In January, Mr Darville accused the government of putting the Equinor oil spill on the “back burner,” claiming at the time that he witnessed a “very minor amount” of clean up done in the forest near the South Riding Point site. It has been suggested that the clean up was halted in recent weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The spill occurred when roofs were blown off Equinor’s storage tanks as Hurricane Dorian pounded Grand Bahama in early September 2019.