Although the government developed oil spill response capacities 12 years ago after a slick in the Sundarbans in 1994, it utterly failed to utilise its know-how in last month’s Sela River spill, experts said.
After the Sela spill, the harmful effects of which have been debated by members of cabinet, the government took a full 50 hours to decide what to do.
The government’s indifference to applying its own recommendations, made in 2002, to manage oil spills is responsible for prolonging the effect of the Sela River oil spill, according to Tanjimduddin Khan, a political ecologist who works on forests and ecosystems.
In response to the sinking of an oil tanker that contained 200,000 litres of heavy oil in the Passur River near Dhangmari forest station in the Sundarbans in August 1994, the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF), in association with Japan Oil Engineering Co Ltd, Fuyo Ocean Development & Engineering Co Ltd, and Consolidated Services Limited, carried out the Oil Spill Impact and Response Management Programme which trained forest department officials and made several recommendations on oil spill management.
Yet during the Sela River spill, in which an oil tanker containing around 358,000 litres of furnace oil sank inside the mangrove forest, the government failed to take any effective initiative for at least 50 hours after the incident.
Oil tanker Southern Star 7 sank in the Sela River at Mrigmari at 6am on December 09, causing a serious oil slick. It took the government two days to decide what to do, and ultimately barehanded residents of the area manually scooped up the spilled oil.
As a result of the delayed response, the spilled oil spread across a large area of the forest, harming the ecosystem and aquatic species.
On why the government did not use its own knowledge to tackle the accident, Yunus Ali, chief conservator of forests (CCF) told the Dhaka Tribune that the programme had been conducted by Mongla Port Authority and not by his department.
Refuting the report’s claim that several forest officials had been trained under the programme, he said only one forest department staff had been trained – and he had retired.
He acknowledged the need to formulate a contingency plan to respond to oil spills, as recommended by the project, but said the plan is yet to see the light of day.
“The existence of the project, which aimed to train forest officials to respond to this type of emergency, proves that the government had had the capacity to respond to the Sela spill but did not use it,” Pavel Partha, ecology and biodiversity researcher, said.
He said the government had to take responsibility for the long-term damage to the forest ecosystem resulting from not treating the issue as an emergency.
According to the Oil Spill Impact and Response Management Program report, oil from the 1994 spill spread about 15 kilometres downstream from the stricken ship and affected a considerable part of the Sundarbans.
It said there had been no systematic study conducted on the level of toxic hydrocarbons in the soils.
Monitoring and surveillance facilities were not available to quantify the extent of the pollution, it said.
Chronic exposure to oil residue results in damages to aerial roots, reduction in litterfall, deformation of seedlings and reduced survival and reproduction, according to the report.
“They are sensitive to oil partly because oil films on the breathing roots inhibit the supply of oxygen to underground root systems. Sundari species are particularly more vulnerable than other flora species in the forest,” the report said.
According to a study conducted by the Environmental Science Department of Khulna University after the Sela spill last month, more than 500 square kilometres of the forest had been affected seriously by oil contamination.
However, a UN expert team disclosed its primary findings on December 31 saying the Sundarbans experienced a “limited” environmental impact.
Local people manually collected 68,000 litres of furnace oil from the river in exchange for cash payments from owner Padma Oil Company.