Chemical spills on the increase as harbour storage areas become run down

Clean up of Pansio oil spill likely to take a week

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The incidence of serious chemicals spills and leaks in Finland has increased in recent years.
      According to the Safety Technology Authority (TUKES), there were for instance 23 leaks last year, even though the authority's target was to keep the number well below twenty. The aim is to reduce the numbers to no more than 17 by 2012.
     
The primary cause for the leaks is the ageing of harbour storage areas, tanks, and pipes, which are increasingly in need of acute maintenance.
      Generally what happens is that tanks containing chemicals spill over, or pipes freeze in the winter months.
      Companies handling chemicals are obliged to get a licence for their activities from TUKES. Chief Inspector Anne-Mari Lähde from the authority notes that nevertheless the first line of responsibility for ensuring safety through monitoring and the like remains with the companies concerned.
     
TUKES has observed that a good many of the reported spills have taken place in the Turku area.
      The most recent case occurred in Pansio over the Midsummer weekend, when a pipe burst at a pumping plant and nearly 100,000 litres of oily bilge water discharged from vessels was released onto the surrounding area and into the rain-water drains. The leak was noted by a security guard in the early hours of Sunday morning.
      The clean-up operation is expected to take a week. On Monday excavators took away contaminated soil, and the oily water residue was steam-hosed off the walls of drains.
     
Local manager Taisto Kuutti of EkoPort Turku, where the spill took place, said that a lesson had been learned and security would be stepped up.
      The company, which collects waste oil and bilge water from vessels arriving in Finnish harbours and then processes it for heating and as an industrial raw material, says that operations will continue in spite of the weekend's accident.
     
TUKES will be demanding a full report on the circumstances surrounding the spill.
      It is unclear as yet what the costs of the accident will amount to.


Links:
  TUKES, Finnish Safety Technology Authority
  EkoPort Turku Oy

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