The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has con­firmed that rough­ly three bar­rels worth of oil have been cleaned up from the ini­tial spill of oil in the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary, overnight in­to to­day.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment, the EMA al­so says mon­i­tor­ing of the Sanc­tu­ary area and Swamp will con­tin­ue, to de­ter­mine the full ex­tent of dam­age from the spill.

In ad­di­tion, the Po­lice Ser­vice is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide as­sis­tance with se­cu­ri­ty at the site.

The full text of the EMA’s up­date, fol­lows…

(EMA) — The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) was in­formed by the Forestry Di­vi­sion of The Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Lands and Fish­eries of a spill of oily ma­te­r­i­al in the Ca­roni Swamp at around 5pm on Thurs­day, 11 Au­gust 2022. The EMA im­me­di­ate­ly in­formed the fol­low­ing agen­cies, Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) and Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI).  The EMA’s En­vi­ron­men­tal Po­lice Unit (EPU) vis­it­ed the site on the same day. 

The ODPM pro­cured a vac­u­um truck and oth­er equip­ment for the clean-up, which com­menced at 6:30pm last evening, 11 Au­gust 2022.  The es­ti­mat­ed amount of oily ma­te­r­i­al is three (3) bar­rels.

The ODPM su­per­vised the ini­tial spill re­sponse mea­sures and hand­ed over to Mr. Steve Lal­be­har­ry, the EMA’s Re­gion­al Co­or­di­na­tor, at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7:50pm. Ab­sorbent booms, drone sur­vey and ini­tial as­sess­ment of the drainage of the po­ten­tial source were con­duct­ed. A sam­ple was tak­en by the Forestry Di­vi­sion, and this will be hand­ed over to the IMA, how­ev­er no source has been iden­ti­fied.

The EMA made a re­quest to Su­per­in­ten­dent Si­mon of TTPS Cen­tral Di­vi­sion for as­sis­tance with se­cu­ri­ty at the site giv­en the lo­ca­tion and, in an ef­fort, to pre­vent any fur­ther unau­tho­rised ac­cess. TTPS High­way Pa­trol Unit, Po­lice Of­fi­cers of Ca­roni Po­lice Sta­tion and Of­fi­cers of the In­ter Agency Task Force were present dur­ing the ex­er­cise.

Fur­ther sur­veil­lance will be con­duct­ed by Forestry Di­vi­sion along with EMA and IMA to­day to as­sess im­pact­ed ar­eas along the riv­er and whether it en­tered the Gulf of Paria. Fur­ther re­cov­ery and clean-up works will be con­duct­ed, and all con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed ma­te­r­i­al will be hand­ed over to an ap­proved fa­cil­i­ty for han­dling/ dis­pos­al.