by Al Gedicks
While most Americans are familiar with the Exxon Valdez spill, few have heard of Chevron/Texaco’s far more serious oil disaster in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest. Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001, dumped 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater (known as “produced water”) into the Amazon from 1964 to 1992. According to the Amazon Defense Coalition, that amounted to “about 4 million gallons on a daily basis, or a total of 30 times more crude than was spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster.”
The area affected by Chevron/Texaco’s contamination is roughly the size of Rhode Island. The toxic wastewater discharged into local streams and waterways contained a variety of toxic metals and cancer-causing petroleum hydrocarbons, including benzene, toluene, arsenic, lead, mercury and cadmium. By dumping the wastewater – instead of the common practice in the U.S. of reinjecting it into the ground – the company saved an estimated $3 per barrel, or about $4.5 billion.
In addition, Chevron abandoned roughly 1,000 open-air unlined waste pits filled with dangerous toxins. Activists describe the devastation as an “Amazon Chernobyl.”
Many Americans breathed a sigh of relief when President Barack Obama pressured BP to set up a $20 billion escrow fund to compensate victims of the Gulf oil disaster. The victims of Chevron’s contamination were not so fortunate. Thirty-thousand indigenous peoples and settlers from Ecuador’s Amazon basin are suing Chevron for contaminating some 1,700 square miles of Amazon rainforest in what the plaintiffs say is the largest contaminated site on Earth. The case, originally filed in 1993, is now being heard in the oil town of Lago Agrio, Ecuador. The suit charges that Chevron/Texaco engaged in “negligent, reckless, deliberate and outrageous acts.” The plaintiffs allege these actions led to the systematic and irreversible destruction of their homelands and provoked a health epidemic. Levels of petroleum byproducts have been found in water used for drinking, washing and bathing that are far in excess of recognized European safety limits. Residents of oil-impacted communities have suffered increased rates of cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, skin disease and nerve damage as documented in recent scientific studies.
The company has argued it already spent $40 million on cleanup and that the Ecuadorian government had already released the company from any liabilities associated with its operations. However, as the trial proceeded it became clear that Chevron’s cleanup consisted of covering some of the waste pits with dirt while the toxins seeped into the groundwater. If Chevron loses this case, as appears likely, the company will face a $27 billion liability for oil damages, cleanup costs and compensation for cancer deaths.
When the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York sent the case back to Ecuador in 2002, it also ruled that any financial penalty imposed against Chevron would be enforceable by U.S. courts. To avoid paying the $27 billion, Chevron has filed a claim under the United States-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty asking an arbitrator to order Ecuador to prevent judgment from being enforced against Chevron pending the outcome of the arbitration. Steven Donziger, a U.S. adviser to the plaintiffs, says Chevron is trying to evade responsibility for its toxic legacy by taking its case to a court where the plaintiffs aren’t represented. The arbitration claim does not affect the Ecuadorian court proceeding.
A victory for the plaintiffs in Ecuador will reinforce and extend the precedent already established in the BP disaster – namely, that Big Oil cannot escape liability for environmental negligence, no matter where the damage occurs.
Gedicks is a sociology professor at the UW-La Crosse and author of “Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations.” Posted in Guest on Friday, June 25, 2010 4:45 am Chevron, Amazon Rainforest