•  nueva loja, ecuador
• Wednesday, March 30, 2011
• Inter Press Service

When the trunks of the trees move with every step you take, you know you are in a swamp. This is what happens when you walk over the seemingly firm and vegetation-covered ground over what was once a pit used to dump oil sludge in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest.

The extent and impact of oil contamination on the environment and human health in northeastern Ecuador are much worse than anyone could imagine, as Tierramérica discovered during an extensive tour of the area.

This reporter travelled 400 kilometres of highways and roads in the northeastern provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana and visited six communities affected and 12 sites contaminated by the U.S. oil company Texaco during its oil exploration and production activities between 1964 and 1990.

The swamp with the moving trees was the 'pool' filled with oil waste from the Yuca 9 well, one of 162 that Texaco claims to have cleaned up or 'remediated' between 1995 and 1998. These pools or pits, some of them as big as a football field, were used to dump mud and other waste produced by oil drilling, and even human faeces and garbage, since there were no sanitary landfills or wastewater treatment facilities built.

In a sentence handed down by a judge in Nueva Loja, the capital of Sucumbíos, on Feb. 14, the U.S. corporation Chevron, which now owns Texaco, was ordered to pay 9.5 billion dollars as compensation for the damages to the environment and human health caused by its subsidiary.

The plaintiffs — indigenous people and farmers organised in the Asamblea de Afectados por Texaco (AAT - Assembly of those Affected by Texaco) — have appealed the verdict, as they consider the amount awarded insufficient to remedy the disaster, including the impacts on human health. Chevron has also appealed, claiming that the lawsuit is 'fraudulent'. The case will now move up to the Provincial Court of Sucumbíos.

In an agreement signed in 1995 with the Ecuadorian government, Texaco assumed responsibility for remediation of one third of the environmental liabilities resulting from the oil operations in the rainforest. The other two thirds corresponded to the government. At the trial, Chevron alleged that its clean-up obligations had been satisfactorily fulfilled as of 1998.

But as Tierramérica was able to observe first hand, the 'remediation' of the toxic oil waste pools consisted of filling them with sticks, tires, tanks and scrub and then covering it all up with soil. Over the following 15 years, thanks to the fertile Amazon rainforest climate, these areas have become overgrown with vegetation and even trees — the ones that move with every step you take near them. But you only have to dig down a metre and a half or two to find the oil sludge.

Two members of the Amazon Defense Coalition, the group of Amazonian grassroots organisations and communities that is backing the suit filed by the AAT, drilled holes like these for soil testing in numerous sites visited by Tierramérica, including the former waste pit at the Sacha 53 well, where Chevron claims to have reports attesting to successful remediation.

Texaco admits to having constructed a total of 326 oil waste pits while operating in the region, but court-ordered inspections and surveys established that at least 956 had been dug. Even before 1995, Texaco had already covered up other pits that the Amazon Defense Coalition calls 'hidden pools'. When these pits were dug, they were not lined with any protective material whatsoever, which means toxic wastes seeped into the soil and eventually filtered into rivers and streams.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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