http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=1&
u=/nm/20031022/sc_nm/environment_ecuador_dc
Wed, Oct 22, 2003
Ecuadoreans Sue U.S. Oil Firm Over Amazon
Pollution
By Amy Taxin
CAPTION:
"A waste pit filled with crude oil left by Texaco drilling
operations years earlier lies in a jungle clearing near the
Amazonian town of Sacha, Ecuador, October 21, 2003. Ecuadorean
Indians wearing feathered headdresses and red face-paint marched
outside a jungle courthouse at the start of a case accusing
U.S. oil giant ChevronTexaco of polluting the Amazon."
(Lou Dematteis/Reuters)
LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador (Reuters) - Ecuadorean Indians wearing
feathered headdresses and red face-paint marched outside a
jungle courthouse on Tuesday at the start of a case accusing
U.S. oil giant ChevronTexaco of polluting the Amazon.
"Before Texaco,
we were free. We drank from the river, bathed
in the river and everything was peaceful because it wasn't
polluted," 67-year-old Secoya Indian Esteban Lusitande said
in broken Spanish.
"Now there's nothing.
We can't even swim."
The case opened in
Lago Agrio, a rundown town 100 miles north
of Quito, after nine years of legal battles in the United States
ended with a U.S. Appeals Court ruling the dispute should be
heard in Ecuador.
Environmentalists hope
the case will set a precedent forcing
companies in the developing world to observe the same anti-pollution
standards demanded in rich nations.
Lawyers for 30,000
Ecuadorean plaintiffs -- many of them poor
Indians -- have said a subsidiary of Texaco, which merged with
Chevron in 2001, dumped 18.5 billion gallons of oil-laden water
into rivers while it was producing crude in Ecuador's lush Amazon
jungle from 1972 to 1992.
Farmers say their well-water
is laced with an oily film and
their children suffer rashes and fevers after swimming.
They are demanding the oil giant clean up the alleged spills
and pay for health programs.
ChevronTexaco argues
the subsidiary took measures to keep
water clean and said it should not be on trial in Ecuador.
Inside the courtroom,
lawyers in button-down shirts shrugged off
the heat while bare-breasted Indian women sat in the audience,
some nursing their children.
Judge Alberto Guerra
told the two sides to come back with evidence
in six days. A verdict could take months.
ChevronTexaco defense
lawyers asserted that the company
should not be held responsible in Ecuadorean courts for a
local subsidiary's prior actions.
"It is not true
that ChevronTexaco Corp. has agreed to submit
to the jurisdiction and competency of Ecuador's courts,"
said
attorney Adolfo Callejas. He said the merged company had not
assumed all of Texaco's obligations.
Texaco has said environmental
damage was minimal and that oil
production water was treated before it was released into the
environment.
It also points to a
$40 million clean-up program approved
by Ecuador's government in 1998 as evidence that the company
complied with its environmental commitments.
"We used the appropriate
technology at that time," Ricardo
Reis Veiga, attorney for ChevronTexaco, told reporters.
But the plaintiffs
say the clean-up was inadequate and that
pits of tar-like oil left behind in the jungle overflow during
heavy rains and seep into rivers -- the lifeblood for the area's
indigenous peoples.
"These pollutants
are in the environment now, today, and
they continue to hurt the local population," plaintiffs'
attorney Alberto Wray told the judge.
Wray said he was not
surprised the company objected to
the case being heard in Ecuador. "We think they're wrong.
Under U.S. legislation, ChevronTexaco took over Texaco's
obligations," he said.
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