Irving Oil, Grant Enterprises plead guilty to environmental charge

Following the massive leak of diesel fuel from an underground storage tank at an Irving Oil gas station in Woodstock back in 2024, Irving Oil Limited and Grant Enterprises 1984 Limited pleaded guilty to a charge of releasing a contaminant into the environment under the Clean Environment Act. An additional charge of failing to report that leak was dropped as a result. In an agreed statement of fact read by Crown Prosecutor Patrick Wilbur, the cause of the substantial leak was due to a faulty elbow that fed an underground storage tank. An investigation found that the installed pipe placed in 2014 was made of aluminum, a material that was never approved or permitted for an underground petroleum system. It should have been made from steel or from fiberglass. As a result, sometime between August and September of 2024, that elbow failed and started to leak fuel into the ground. The leak was detected in December when the Tim Hortons next door reported the smell of fuel in its well system. Both the Irving Oil gas station and Tim Hortons were closed as a result, and inspectors eventually found leaked diesel pooled in the ditches alongside the nearby TransCanada Highway. It's estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 liters of diesel were leaked over the course of four months. A statement of fact also notes that cleanup crews were able to recover about 195,000 liters of light non-aqueous phase liquid noted in the documents as diesel. As a result 42 groundwater monitoring wells were installed as well as 20 drilled wells and a variety of other monitoring systems as the Crown argued that this leak and its cleanup will be a decades-long process to come. The documents also note that loss of such a significant amount of fuel should have been detected by employees, but it was not, despite daily measurements and some proper procedures. But it notes that the governance systems, that includes the people, processes and technology, was not being followed in this case. The Crown noted that Irving Oil has spent in the magnitude of $15 million so far in cleanup and remediation in the area and that number will likely grow in the years to come. The Crown has requested a fine total of $400,000 to be levied at both Irving Oil and Grant Enterprises combined, an amount that the two companies did not disagree with. Judge Rose Campbell said that she will be back with her decision on February 8, 2027.