At least 174,000 litres of diesel recovered from gas station leak in Woodstock, province says

The New Brunswick government now says 174,000 litres of diesel fuel leaked from an Irving gas station in Woodstock, up from earlier an estimate of 100,000 litres. 

And it's significantly larger than the 5,000 litres first estimated when the leak was discovered in December.

"To date, approximately 174,000 litres of diesel has been recovered," said Vicky Lutes, spokesperson for the Department of Environment and Climate Change, in an email.

Back in mid-December, a Tim Hortons on Beardsley Road, which is beside Murray's Irving gas station and restaurant, reported its water was contaminated with fuel. That led the restaurant and gas station to close following the discovery of the diesel leak at the Irving. 

The new figure comes two days after the department announced it was launching provincewide inspections of retail gas stations to "confirm regulatory compliance and to ensure that site owners have proper measures in place for detecting and managing petroleum product spills."

The statement posted on the Department of the Environment website also says the inspections have been launched after "receiving further information last week from Irving Oil Ltd. on the circumstances of the spill."

CBC News requested an interview with Environment Minister Gilles LePage to ask about the inspections, but was told he was unavailable.

On March 25, LePage said in the legislature there was an investigation into the leak. CBC News has requested additional details about that process, but the department has not provided any. 

In the more than three months since CBC News began reporting on this leak, no one from the Department of Environment or Irving Oil Ltd. has been made available to answer questions about the leak and the potential risks to local well water.

According to documents obtained by CBC News through a right to information request, the diesel leak was first detected on Dec. 13, 2024.

Irving Oil Ltd. was deemed the party responsible for the leak by the province. A faulty elbow pipe leading to an underground storage tank was found to be the source. But so far neither Irving Oil nor the province have stated how long the fuel had been leaking. 

Some people in Woodstock have said they detected diesel in the water at the Tim Hortons several weeks before anything was done. 

According to Service New Brunswick's property-based environmental information database, there are four double-walled underground fuel storage tanks at the Beardsley Road Irving station, which are registered with the province under the Petroleum Product Storage and Handling Regulations.

Three are used to store diesel, while the fourth houses gasoline. One of those diesel tanks was installed in 2003 and holds 65,000 litres of fuel. A second 50,000-litre tank was also installed in 2003. The third was installed in 2016 and has a storage capacity of 100,000 litres. It is unclear which tank housed the faulty elbow pipe. But all handle less fuel than is reported to have leaked.