The Tribune

By MALCOLM STRACHAN

THE diesel spill at the Old Navy Base cove last week turned all eyes on Exuma – and once more brought the discussion about how well we are protecting our environment to the fore.

In many ways, it feels like it’s too soon to talk about everything surrounding the Exuma situation – we still need to know a lot more about how the spill happened, and what repercussions there will be for those involved.

It is encouraging, though, to see two things – first, the speed at which the clean-up has begun, and secondly, the seriousness with which the matter appears to be being treated.

Starting with the first of those, within two days, more than 80 percent of the spill had been removed, we are told, with no further spillage along to adjacent coves and bays. Some of that will have been the easy part of the clean-up where the fuel was still on the surface and hadn’t seeped into cracks or hard to clear places. But still, it shows that the clean-up operation was ready to swing into action, containing the pollution where it was and removing it swiftly.

It was also announced the cove with remain closed until August 10 as the clean-up continues – again encouraging as it shows the clean-up wasn’t just a swoop in for show and then move on. Hopefully, that date will be extended if needed to ensure a full clean-up – but there’s been no evidence so far the spill is being lightly treated.

Which brings us to the second point, the seriousness in which the government reacted.

Deputy Prime Minister Chester Cooper won a lot of praise after his announcement for swiftly travelling to the scene and taking charge.

He doesn’t seem to be in the mood to let anything slide with regard to the incident.

“Should there be penalties? Well, there was recklessness. In my view, there should be penalties,” he told the press.

“We were fortunate that it was contained but we have an obligation to ensure that sort of thing doesn’t keep happening; and the government, through all of its arms, is going to make sure that we manage this process a little bit better going forward in the future.”

How well the penalties currently place will discourage another such event is a different matter.

The problem happened when the MT Arabian was offloading fuel to Bahamas Power and Light. It was supposed to offload 115,000 gallons but 35,000 gallons was missing. Apparently, there was a breach in the hose that ran from the supply ship. Quite how 35,000 gallons could leak unnoticed when people said they could smell it from far away from the scene is a question for investigators. It sounds at the very least as if there was a lack of monitoring during the transfer.

Quite what the recklessness was that Mr Cooper refers to is something again that hopefully the investigation will show.

But the director of the Department of Environmental Planning and Protection, Dr Rhianna Neely-Murphy, in saying that the cove was “almost back to normal” said: “According to the legislation, there are options for just illegal discharge and then there are fines. Sun Oil and the companies involved would have to pay for any and all remediation activities that the government would have paid for up until this point and those moving into the future, so those will be court matters.”

What is that fine? Under the DEPP Act from 2019, it’s a maximum fine of $20,000. That amount of money and more has already been spent in dealing with the damage. That fine is tiny even in comparison with the cost of the lost fuel – Sun Oil general manager Clinton Rolle said on Wednesday that the fuel has a value of $4 per gallon, so about $140,000 worth into the sea.

How can we really take seriously our system of fines when the cost is so low to the polluter that it is outweighed by the lost fuel itself?

There was another concern that might have been lost in the mix during the spill – the chairman of FOCOL Holdings, Sir Franklyn Wilson, said Sun Oil was “investigating” whether the company contracted for the delivery had the necessary insurance. Shouldn’t that have been known before one drop of fuel was loaded onto the vessel? If I have a car crash, there’s no use in me checking if I’m insured after I run into another vehicle – you need to know that before you put the key in the ignition.

Surely as part of the hiring process, Sun Oil should have required the contractor to send a copy of the valid insurance certificate, which they would have on file the moment anything went wrong. For that matter, and this is something beyond my knowledge, is it Sun Oil that should have the insurance or the contractor they hire? These are matters that should be picked through in legal proceedings.

It is encouraging though that there is talk of such legal proceedings and of fines being applied. They may not be enough, but it doesn’t seem as if such obligations are being shirked.

Credit to Sun Oil for stepping up and putting resources in play to deal with the clean-up, and to pledge to “do whatever’s necessary to stop it happening again”.

We got lucky in many ways with this spill – with its location, with the tides, with the wind. We can’t trust to get lucky next time. If there are lessons to be learned, we must learn them. If there is recklessness involved, the penalties must be severe enough to discourage such a casual approach to handling a potential pollutant.

If that means revising the penalties that can be imposed under the law, so be it.

As I said earlier, it feels too soon to draw too strong conclusions over what comes next as a result of this spill – but we do need to learn from it. It shouldn’t just become a footnote that we never hear about again. It will be interesting to revisit the situation once the investigation is complete – and once any court cases begin.