By any standard, pumping 2,087 gallons of No. 2 heating oil into a septic system is a monumental screw-up.
We shudder to think of what it is going to cost to fully remedy the situation at Medomak Middle School. No matter who pays the bill, it is going to hurt, and somewhere somehow, down the line, consumers will ultimately end up paying the freight.
Since the accident Feb. 10, much has been said and written excoriating the delivery driver who physically made the mistake; a 30-year industry man whom, Maritime Energy officials said, feels terrible about what happened.
We would hope he feels bad, actually; that is the mark of a man with a conscience. While people have piled on to criticize, and with some justification, we think the rush to point fingers may have obscured the bright spot of glory in this story.
The good news is once the accident was discovered, school, company, and state officials moved aggressively and proactively to address the issue.
One of the first, best things they did was respond to inquiries from the press after the spill, take responsibility, explain at a public meeting what happened and why, and lay out what they were going to do about it. That is textbook crisis management stuff and one reason, we believe, why the relative furor died down fairly quickly.
We especially commend Maritime Energy for leading the solution. You could argue that is what they should do; that it is good business to be seen responsibly picking up after yourself, and you would be right, but they didn’t have to.
Maritime Energy is a private company. They could have made themselves less available and forced school officials to be the public face of this mess.
That approach probably wouldn’t have worked well in the long run – being that only one party in this story provided the fuel, the delivery man, and the error – but we commend them for aggressively taking action after the fact.
The result was less whose fault it is and who is paying to clean up what and more let’s-get-this-done-and-done-now. We like it.
We don’t like the circumstances, but once the damage was done it was done. Now all involved should be commended for not making a bad situation worse.
