Oil leak investigated20 months after spill

from page one control premises involving a pollutant spill must notify DEPP, implement an approved contingency plan and work to minimize the threat to human health or the environment.

Randy Butler, the president and a director of Daran Corporation Holdings, a company suing BPL over the leak, expressed outrage yesterday at how long it has taken officials to address the issue, which some fear threatens the environment.

“You have two oil leaks,” he said yesterday, “one was in 2019, the other in 2022. Both were reported to you. If you’re going now to do it when there are possible damages, irreparable damage to the water table and possibly, in fact, people, I don’t know how that is. What would be the purpose of going now? I mean, it’s never too late, but what would you do if you found out that this stuff is already in the water table and moving away to create issues?

What do you do?”

Mr Butler said the media’s coverage of the leak pushed officials to address the problem, calling this “sad” and “very bad optics”. In an affidavit he filed in June, he alleged that he spoke to top DEPP officials about the matter last year, but got no response.

Diesel spills near water bodies can pose significant challenges. The longer it takes to perform remediation activities, the chance increases that the substance would migrate through soil or groundwater and spread.

“I don’t know if they’ve been now ordered to come or they were not ordered to come before, or Androsians are not that important to them,”

Mr Butler said.

“This should have been a simple matter to resolve due to the nature of what are the gallons of diesel fuel.”

Marva Miller, the owner of a property also affected by the spill, said her brother collected diesel from the ground after an earlier spill.

She said she would hire a lawyer.

“I will because I know the land is contaminated with diesel spill and all that stuff,” she said. “If anything happens, we could lose our building, and it’s not good for the building, period.”

BPL, which did not previously disclose the leak, declined to comment on Monday, citing ongoing litigation.

Yesterday, Attorney General Ryan Pinder said his office had not been engaged on the matter.

In May, Daran Corporation Holdings filed a lawsuit that accuses BPL of failing to inform the public about the “serious health risks” associated with the diesel spill.