A Nackawic, N.B., man says he suspected a fuel leak at a Tim Hortons coffee shop in Woodstock and complained to a manager months before it was shut down.
Jody Bourgoin, who works in Woodstock, said he tried to warn staff about diesel in the restaurant’s water back in October, more than two months before the Tim Hortons on Beardsley Road was closed because of a significant leak of diesel from Murray’s Irving gas station next door.
He said he stopped at the Beardsley Road location on his lunch break to charge his electric car on Oct. 21. While he was waiting, he went into the coffee shop to use the bathroom.
“When I went to wash my hands, I just noticed it smelled like gas,” said Bourgoin.
“So I tried to wash that smell off. Obviously, I couldn’t. I realized it was coming out of the tap.”
He left to go back to work, but when co-workers also noticed the smell, he decided to call the coffee shop to let them know they might have a problem.
“The manager I talked to basically said the smell is from their filtration system for their water,” said Bourgoin.
Jody Bourgoin says he spoke with a manager about the smell of diesel fuel in the water at the Beardsley Road Tim Hortons in Woodstock weeks before the restaurant was eventually shut down because of fuel contamination from the Irving gas station next door.
He said the manager he spoke with wasn’t alarmed and told him his complaint wasn’t the first.
“She said she had multiple calls,” said Bourgoin. “And that was it.”
CBC News verified that Bourgoin did make a call to that location through the call records on his phone. His call, made at 12:45 p.m. on Oct. 21, lasted 33 seconds.
Bourgoin is one of several people CBC News has spoken to about the smell of fuel in the coffee shop in the weeks leading up to its closure.
Unconvinced by the explanation he received from the manager, he said, he never went back.
“No water filtration system smells like diesel, it just doesn’t.”
On Dec. 12, about seven weeks later, both the Tim Hortons and the Irving gas station were closed after the well water at the coffee shop tested positive for fuel contamination.
In the months since, the area has been transformed as excavators work to remove contaminated soil and vacuum trucks run around the clock to suck up what could be more than 100,000 litres of leaked fuel.
That Tim Hortons location is still closed. The Irving gas station and its adjoining restaurant have reopened and rely on water trucked in from Woodstock’s municipal supply.
Bourgoin said that when he realized the massive cleanup effort was because of a diesel leak that he’d suspected months ago, he was conflicted.
“I was right, and it was kind of scary,” said Bourgoin.
And he’s not alone.
Fear of the unknown
When the Tim Hortons shut down, Wanda Pedersen found herself out of a job.
She had worked at that location on and off for the last three years, but her problems got worse when she learned the leak was significant enough to jeopardize her well.
“I’m terrified, because we don’t know where it’s going,” said Pedersen, who lives about 750 metres from the leak’s point of origin.
She describes her entire neighbourhood as being on edge and fearful for their water supply.
She said she was aware of complaints about the water in the bathrooms at the coffee shop.
“Everybody just thought it was just sulphur,” said Pedersen. “Because we have hard water there.”
She was aware of the smell “maybe a month, maybe a couple weeks” before things shut down and was also aware of complaints from customers about a week prior to the shutdown.
Because both Tim Hortons and Irving Oil Ltd. have said so little publicly, she turned to Legal Aid for advice and said she’s been told to go for a series of medical tests as a precaution.
“I did drink the water,” said Pedersen.
“I can’t see there being anything in it but just to be on the safe side,” she’s going to follow that legal advice.
She said the coffee shop’s well water ran through a filtration system for cooking systems.
Reports obtained by CBC News through a right to information request with the province’s Department of Environment and Local government show that tests at the Tim Hortons found the restaurant’s unfiltered well water came up positive for contamination, while the filtered well water was negative.
“The results returned today indicating presence of gasoline in their untreated water,” wrote Denis Ouellette, with the Department of Environment, on Dec. 18.
“Water treated through the reverse osmosis returned clean.”
According to Tim Hortons, none of its products were affected by the leak.
An email from the company stated, “The health and safety of guests is our top priority and the local restaurant owner acted quickly when this situation first arose.”
“The restaurant’s food and beverages were not impacted,” stated the email. “However, the owner will not reopen unless we are fully confident that we can serve the community with the quality guest experience they expect and deserve.”
Investigation being conducted
On Tuesday, Gilles LePage, minister of environment and climate change, responded to questions in the legislature about the leak from Green Party Leader David Coon.
LePage said there was an investigation into the leak. CBC News requested additional details about that process, but the department has not provided any.
CBC News attempted to contact Ian MacDougall, the owner of the Beardsley Road Tim Hortons. He did not return any phone calls.
Despite multiple emails and phone calls to Irving Oil Ltd., the company has also not responded to CBC News regarding the leak.
