Cruz yesterday said he reported to the National Response Center, a 24-hour emergency hotline in Washington, D.C., the looming threats to public safety and health posed by CUC’s unstable fuel storage.
He said fuel storage tank 104, containing over 300,000 gallons of used and contaminated fuel, is ready to collapse at any given time. Waste oil has also been stored in leaking drums, he added.
The waste oil has reached the coastal waters from Tanapag Harbor to Charlie Dock in Garapan along the hotel coastal areas, Cruz said.
“This poses a serious threat for us in the typhoon season,” he added.
According to Cruz, Taotao Tano has reasons to believe that due to poor financial condition of CUC, it will not be able contain a “disastrous fuel spill already leaking into our coastal waters.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has already cited CUC but the utilities agency’s management remains silent about these oil and fuel leakages, Cruz said.
“Someone has to be held accountable and responsible for these catastrophic disasters that have been taking place for many years,” he added.
Cruz said the former CUC Executive Director Antonio Guerrero reminded the Legislature that the EPA sanctioned CUC and imposed monetary penalties for noncompliance.
Guerrero also said that CUC must have insurance coverage for the engines at the power plants, including distribution lines, to cover machinery breakdowns, brownout, explosions, and natural disasters.
But CUC neither has the cash nor the credit limit needed to get insurance coverage, Cruz said.
