Utility owes citizens an update on Tufts Cove spill cleanup, says environmentalist

Nearly a month and a half after thousands of litres of sticky bunker Cfuel spilled into Halifax harbour, it remains unclear when the painstaking job of cleaning it upwill be finished.

A leaking pipe at the Tufts Cove Nova Scotia Power generating station spilled about 5,000 litres into Halifax harbour Aug. 2.

Nearly two weeks later, the utility announced an additional 9,900 litres had leaked into a containment trench and another 9,400 litres entered the cooling water system of one of its generators.

On Aug. 14, Nova Scotia Power's chief operating officer saidthe cleanup would be finished by mid-September. A month later, that work continues.

"I'm curious as to what they've been doing for the last three weeks or so," said Mark Butler, the policy director at the Ecology Action Centre.

"Are they finding more oil than they anticipated? Is it turning up on the sea floor? Is there more of it in the rocks or shoreline that they anticipated?"

In an email to CBCNews, utility spokesperson Tiffany Chase would only say that "steady progress" is being made on the cleanup.

The Environment Department saidthe majority of the cleanup has been completed.

"There is some material at shoreline that hasn't been easy to clean, and Nova Scotia Power is employing different methods to remove it," spokesperson Bruce Nunnsaid in an email. "They are keeping us informed."

Butler lives on the Halifax side of the harbour across from Tufts Cove. He said cleanup personnel are still on-site and the boom used to contain the oil spill remains in place.

The spill highlights the need to move away from Nova Scotia Power's use of bunker C fuel and toward renewable energies, he said.

Bunker C fuel oil is the thickest of the residual fuels and is typically used by ships, industrial boilers and power generating stations.

"It's costly to the environment, it's costly to clean up,"said Butler. "Also, when you burn bunker C, it's one of the dirtier fuels, so it's not great for air quality and the air that you and I breathe."

Butler would like to see the utility release a report detailing what exactly took place,why the spill happened and answer questions about the integrity of the power plant's warning systems and infrastructure.

"If they're not ready to do that because they're still cleaning things up, an update would be very welcome," he said.

"I think they owe that to the citizens of Halifax."

Chase said an update on cleanup efforts would be provided soon.

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