Nova Scotia Power now says an oil leak at its Tufts Cove generating station involved 19,300 more litres of oil than originally disclosed.
The Province’s power utility says it’s made “steady progress” on cleaning up the less than 5,000 litres of oil that made its way into the harbour but revealed on Tuesday that additional oil was released in the spill.
“Based on our assessments, 95 per cent of the less than 5,000 litres of oil that left the site and entered Halifax Harbour has now been successfully recovered,” said Mark Sidebottom, chief operating officer of Nova Scotia Power, in a press release.
READ MORE: Halifax Harbour oil spill cleanup to take weeks, says Nova Scotia Power
Officials at a press conference on Tuesday said that crews are working to clean up the roughly 250 litres of oil that remain in the harbour.
The leak, stemming from a hole about an inch in size, was said to have been found during a visual inspection that is conducted several times a day.
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Nova Scotia Power says that the since the initial leak was discovered, the company has now completed work that validates their estimates of how much oil has been recovered from a containment below the pipe, as well as the plant’s cooling water system.
The utility says that 9,900 litres of oil was captured in the containment trench while 9,400 litres entered the cooling water system of one of the generators at the power plant.
More than 95 per cent of the oil in the containment trench was cleaned up in the first few hours of the leak while approximately 50 per cent of the oil in the plant’s cooling water system has been recovered.
“We take our environmental commitments very seriously — we are undertaking a thorough clean-up of any contaminated areas and a significant number of people have been safely working day after day to ensure that we recover all of the oil,” Sidebottom said.
WATCH: Oil leaks out of Nova Scotia Power generating station into Halifax harbour
Nova Scotia Power says the clean-up efforts could continue into mid-September.
Crews at the site continue to shoo away birds and other wildlife from the site of the oil spill, using noisemakers as a deterrent.
Containment booms are also expected to remain in the water until the clean-up is over while crews are going monitor for any “residual oil sheen” on the water.
With files from The Canadian Press
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