10,000 litres of heating oil leaked into sea... by Housing!

10,000 litres of heating oil are reported to have leaked from a States housing estate into the sea via surface drains.

There's thought to be no harm to drinking water, but some danger to marine life... not to mention the cost to the tax-payer of the lost oil and clean-up etc.

What have they done to curb this? has the problem been resolved?

I thought you needed catchment pits to prevent this sort of thing happening!! Shocking for the environmrnt.

dreadful thing to happen.

Unfortunately a lot of plumbers in both islands (here and Jersey) don't fit or maintain oil heating systems properly and are allowed to get away with it by Building Control. It is about time that the authorities clamped down on the cowboys.

Trouble is, is it not a case of the 'authorities' policing each other as Building Control is just another States department?

So what are they going to do? They won't prosecute each other as it will be a complete waste of time and money. The fine would come from the States budget to be paid into another States departments budget.

i see where your coming from Dell, but does that not increase departmental apathy??

Perhaps some of these pen pushers should be made to do manual labour cleaning up theit 'apathetic' mess. Might make them think twice about future developments?

I doubt whether your housing authority have OFTEC technicians on the books, so any work on the system would have been carried out by a contractor.

Dell wrote:...They won't prosecute each other as it will be a complete waste of time and money...

I believe the relevant water pollution law to this scenario is fairly new, and administered by Transport and Technical Services; would they prosecute another dept.? well I think the first prosecution under the law a couple of years ago was themselves!

Would it be a waste of time and money? Arguable.

It will be interesting to follow the outcome as an indicator of how open and transparent the Jersey States actually are!

The thing is, this will now revert to a 'blame' exercise and finger pointing at some lower paid individual or external contractor instead of what can be learnt to prevent it happening again!

And rightly so, if that's where the blame lies. Once blame has been apportioned I'd hope the fine for any negligent action will be lesson enough to stop it happening again.