BELCO today reported a spill of more than 600 gallons of oil and water at its Pembroke plant.

Officials are blaming the cause on the heavy rains of the past few days.

A spokesperson said BELCO workers first spotted the spill on Saturday evening, near the company’s Oily Water Treatment Plant (OWTP).

“By yesterday, rainwater had flooded the system, causing the oil-and-water mixture to overflow,” the spokesperson said.

A contingency plan saw teams use “absorbent materials, including booms across the Pembroke Canal that runs through the Central Plant” to contain the spill.

Bermuda Fire Service, the Ministry of the Environment and Works & Engineering were all notified and contractors were called in to assist.

“BELCO estimates that 600 to 700 gallons of the oil-and-water mixture spilled, with evidence today that an adjacent, low-lying property, which was also saturated with rainwater, has also been affected,” the spokesperson continued.

“In total, approximately 3,600 gallons of oil and water were pumped from BELCO’s OWTP to reduce the amount of liquid in the tanks yesterday, with discharge to the Government Hazardous Waste Facility. An additional four loads, at 1,800 gallons each, have been pumped from the neighbouring property today and discharged to the OWTP for processing. Approximately 70 percent of the liquid recovered is water, with the remaining 30 percent waste oil.”

Clean-up work is expected to continue for several days.

For more read tomorrow’s Royal Gazette.