Irving Oil Ltd. and Grant Enterprises 1984 Ltd. have pleaded guilty in provincial court to charges under the Clean Environment Act related to a massive diesel spill in Woodstock.
The spill was discovered in December 2024 after a Tim Hortons on Beardsley Road reported its water was contaminated with fuel. The Tim Hortons is next to Murray’s Irving gas station and restaurant.
In Woodstock court on Tuesday, it was revealed that the total spill was between 210,000 and 250,000 litres over four months, which is more than previous estimates.
Irving Oil and Grant Enterprises were originally charged with two counts. The charge of failing to immediately report the leak was dropped. The companies pleaded guilty to a charge of releasing a contaminant into the environment.
Crown prosecutor Patrick Wilbur read an agreed statement of facts that said the leak stemmed from a faulty elbow fitting that fed diesel into a 100,000 litre storage tank.
Grant Enterprises had the tank and fill pipe installed in 2014. One of the fittings on that pipe was made of aluminum when it should have been steel or fiberglass.
“Aluminum alloy elbows were never approved nor permitted, and aluminum … should not be part of an underground petroleum system,” Wilbur read.
A faulty aluminum elbow pipe leading to an underground diesel storage tank was found to be responsible for the leak. (Province of New Brunswick)
The cleanup began after inspectors detected the leak along the nearby Trans-Canada Highway.
Wilbur said in court that cleanup recovered about 195,000 litres of diesel. The cleanup and remediation has cost about $15 million so far and the amount will continue to grow.
He also explained how this much diesel being lost into the ground should have been noticed.
“The governance system that includes people, processes and technologies were not being followed.”
Wilbur said regulations for operating the storage tank requires the owner or operator to measure the level of the tank and compare it to how much has been sold.
He said action should be taken immediately if the comparison shows losses.
“While the measurements were taken, the process failed in that it did not detect the ongoing loss that occurred with each delivery,” said Wilbur. “It was not caught by the systems in place for the four months.”
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There have now been various other systems put in place, including 42 groundwater monitoring wells and 20 drilled wells.
The Crown has requested a total fine of $400,000 with some of the money earmarked for the province’s environmental trust fund. The two companies did not disagree with the amount.
Judge Rose Campbell said she’ll review the case and come back with her sentence on Feb. 8, 2027.
