RUBIS Bahamas officials are eying a year-end opening for its Robinson Road location, which has been plagued with a gas leak that saw the contamination of residents’ underground water and the closure of Cable Bahamas’ New Providence payment centre.

The gas leak was discovered earlier this year and so far the company has spent millions of dollars over the last several months to clean up the mess.

During a news conference yesterday, RUBIS Marine and Maintenance Manager Huel Dames explained what some of that work entailed.

“You would appreciate the fact that it is not above ground and so you can’t look and see where the leak is. So this is why we dug monitoring wells. By analysing the soil and the vapour coming from the wells we could see what’s there,” he said.

“As a result of those wells we are pretty confident that we know exactly where this product is. There has been quite a number of testing going on. We have employed a number of recovery methods starting from vacuuming, skimming and on the site we are employing a method called the soil vapour extraction, where we create a vacuum under the ground in those areas impacted and has the effect of pulling the vapours into a machine that then burns it and it is safe to admit into the air as carbon monoxide.”

RUBIS has also had to pay the water bills of residents who had to shift from private well water to city water.

“Once we determined that there was some impact to the residents – a very proactive step was to do a survey of all homes in the area. Some of them were on their own private wells even though there was a government connection to the city water mains. We went in and we put those homes on the city water mains and we are putting on those homes on city water and we are constantly monitoring their wells to see if there is any presence of hydrocarbons. We are making efforts to minimise any impact to the neighbourhood and adjourning properties,” Mr. Dames said.

The company is expected to take on those bills until government agencies are satisfied that there is no further threat.

Meanwhile, RUBIS is providing the government with information and awaiting approval for its remediation programme so that it can reopen the Robinson Road location.

“Every activity that goes on at the site, the government is aware of. We are very much on schedule. We are very pleased with the progress we have made. We are in the process of completing our remediation plans that is going to submitted to the government for approval. Once we get everything up and running and finalised and satisfied with the authority harm or any distress to any neighbouring properties then we will be ready to open by the end of the year,” he said.