May 2009
U.S. Water News Online
QUITO, Ecuador — A judge is preparing to render a decision in a long-running, multibillion-dollar lawsuit filed by residents of Ecuador's Amazonian rain forest against Texaco for fouling their land.
In the lawsuit, filed in 1993, the plaintiffs charge that, throughout the 1970s and '80s, the American oil company so polluted a swath of northern Ecuador that hundreds died of cancer. The defendant, Chevron Corp. — which bought Texaco in 2001 — denies the accusations.
But a court-appointed expert agrees with many of the plaintiffs' charges and has assessed damages at $27 billion. Now, a judge in the small town of Lago Agrio, says he hopes to have a decision before the end of the year.
Plaintiffs: A Legacy Of Pollution
Donald Moncayo, an activist who works with the poor farmers and Indian plaintiffs in the case, takes visitors on what he calls "toxic tours."
After tramping through the jungle, Moncayo reaches a huge pool of oily sludge and sticks a long pole into the muck. He says this is a legacy of Texaco's quarter-century in Ecuador: pollution that affects tens of thousands of people who bathe and drink from rain forest waterways.
He says mud and other waste produced by drilling and production were dumped in the pit, and the toxins here and in hundreds of similar unlined pits leaked into the ground. A court-appointed geologist, Richard Cabrera, and his 14-member scientific team found barium, lead and other heavy metals in those pits.
Chevron disputes Cabrera's findings. The company wants his report thrown out, saying he is biased toward the plaintiffs.
All this happened in what was once virgin Amazonian jungle, the world's greatest biosphere and an area that still contains huge oil reserves.
The plaintiffs say Texaco, in 18 years of full-scale production, also dumped wastewater into rivers and that pipeline breaks spilled 17 million gallons of oil.
Pablo Fajardo, a 36-year-old lawyer, leads the plaintiffs' team. He grew up poor in the area; this is his first legal case.
Fajardo says his side has proved there was damage, that Chevron was responsible and that the company should pay.
Defendants: Texaco Acted Legally
Locally, the case has been called the trial of the century, and some of the hearings have been held in the jungle. Chevron does not dispute that pollution exists.
But Chevron lawyer Diego Larrea says it's Petroecuador — the state oil company, which still drills oil in the area — that is responsible for the pollution.
Larrea says Texaco adhered to Ecuadorian law. He also says Ecuador's government released the company of legal responsibility after a three-year cleanup a decade ago.
In the current trial, the plaintiffs charge that Texaco's cleanup was a fraud, and the current government of Ecuador agrees.
The original suit was filed against Texaco in 1993 in a New York court. But Chevron argued that the case be moved to Ecuador, saying Ecuadorian courts were impartial and professional.
In 2003, the trial was moved to a ramshackle court in Lago Agrio, a nondescript, dusty town near Colombia's lawless frontier.
The judge in the case, Juan Nunez, says he feels the pressure on his conscience. And he says he has to carefully consider the arguments both sides have offered — arguments laid out in 145,000 pages of evidence.
Texaco came to Ecuador in 1964. When it left nearly 30 years later, it had extracted 1.5 billion barrels and built Ecuador's oil industry from scratch.
The infrastructure is everywhere. Pipelines run alongside major roads. Pumping stations are located in clearings, carved out of the jungle.
And then there are pools of sludge.
The government says Petroecuador is not blameless. It, too, dumped wastewater intro waterways.
But the state oil company's past practices do not absolve Texaco, the government says. Texaco was the primary operator for years and the pollution left behind is close to where people live and where children go to school, the government claims.
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