A run-down court building that also houses the local casino in this Amazon jungle town is the unlikely venue for the largest environmental damages lawsuit ever tried. On the first floor, people play for pennies in The Mirage bingo and slot machine parlor. Three stories up, in Sucumbios provincial court, the stakes are $27 billion.
That’s what local farmers and indigenous tribes want from U.S. oil giant Chevron Corp to fund cleanup of areas they say were polluted with faulty drilling practices in the 1970s and ’80s. The paint is cracked and peeling in the judge’s fourth-storey offices overlooking Lago Agrio, a poor and violent northern Ecuador town near the Colombian border.
Power failures often stop the building’s air conditioners, leaving gamblers and court officials to swelter as judge Leonardo Ordonez pours through thousands of pages of evidence. He says a verdict could be reached in 2011 after 18 years of litigation in U.S. and Ecuadorean courts. As the ruling looms, each side accuses the other of presenting fraudulent evidence while a slew of related legal actions are played out in the United States and Europe.
Investors and the petroleum industry are watching to see if Chevron will have to pay massive damages, setting a precedent that could fuel other big lawsuits against oil companies accused of polluting countries around the world. Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has sided publicly with the plaintiffs. Both sides expect Ordonez to rule against Chevron. The company—charging government interference in the case—vows to appeal any adverse decision.
Plaintiffs say Texaco wrecked wide areas of Ecuador’s jungle by dumping drilling waste into unlined pits and leaving them to fester, an accusation that the company denies. Chevron inherited the case when it bought Texaco in 2001. It says the company cleaned up all pits it was responsible for before turning them over to Ecuador’s state-owned oil firm, Petroecuador, which still operates around Lago Agrio.
“If there is pollution in this area, it is the sole responsibility of the state, which in 1998 released Texaco of further liability,” said Chevron spokesman James Craig, pointing toward one of the waste pools cleaned up by Texaco.
Texaco built and operated more than 330 wells in Ecuador, all of which had at least one reserve pool nearby. The dirt just under the surface of some former waste pits still has a black sheen and carries the eye-watering stench of oil. The suit names 46 people who claim to represent all area residents who may have suffered from contamination. They are not seeking individual awards but money to fund environment cleanup, as well as health and clean water projects.
“We want the money to go toward a permanent solution,” said Carmen Perez, whose small corn farm is near a series of drilling waste pits that still smell of petroleum and, she says, cause her to have chronic headaches.
AMAZON CHERNOBYL?
Analysts say the case could have wide implications.
“If Chevron loses this case, it could set a precedent for similar cases in other countries against not only Chevron but other international oil companies” said Fadel Gheit, managing direct of oil and gas research at Oppenheimer & Co. It could open the floodgates for similar claims, starting in Nigeria where Royal Dutch Shell is being blamed for environmental damage,” he said from his office in New York.
The Ecuador legal saga began in 1993 when a suit was filed against Texaco in a U.S. federal court. The case was tossed out on appeal in 2002 on condition that Texaco agree to Ecuadorean jurisdiction if sued there. A suit was filed in Lago Agrio the next year, this time against Texaco’s new owner Chevron.
About 200,000 pages of documents and 64,000 chemical samples are in evidence while the intrigues of the case have come to resemble something from a Hollywood suspense drama. A previous judge stepped down from hearing the suit last year after he was recorded discussing the case with a couple of shadowy figures who secretly video-taped him with cameras stuck inside a wristwatch and a pen. One of the two men who taped the meeting, a former Chevron contractor, was whisked out of Ecuador by the company. The plaintiffs say the secret taping was an attempt by Chevron to delay judgment, a charge the company denies.
A cottage industry has meanwhile sprung up around the case, with plaintiffs providing reporters with thick folders full of information pointing the finger at Texaco/Chevron for what they call the “Chernobyl of the Amazon”. They offer excursions to Ecuador’s northern jungles known as “the toxic tour”.
Chevron also arranges trips for journalists, dubbed “the non-toxic tour”, showing pits that were cleaned up by Texaco. The company offers slickly-produced desk guides describing the suit as based on false claims driven by lawyers motivated more by greed than concern for the environment.
But the environment is certainly the top worry for farmer Jose Briceno, who lives near Lago Agrio and says he can’t keep livestock because it gets sick and dies.
“The problem now is water quality,” he said, looking over his empty farmyard. “They never really cleaned up this area.”
(Editing by Kieran Murray)
Author: Mark Kolmar and Michael Szabo
[Editor: I saw something on Oprah's web site the other day…she's starting another reality thing with families to see how much they can do without for one week…no shopping, etc. From what I've seen in my short life on this planet, many households waste resources in the most mindless and shameful ways. Just a little thought and presence of mind would save gazillions of tons [more or less] of waste and carbon emissions and everything! Come on, people. Wake up and smell the rotten mess we’re in.]
LONDON—Americans can save some of the 225 billion gallons of water (852 billion liters) wasted each year through over-watering by installing smart systems which deliver just the right amount of moisture. Homeowners and companies over-water their grass and plants by between 30 and 300 percent, said Chris Spain, chief sustainability officer at water management company HydroPoint, citing a report by the American Water Works Association.
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“The reason for the waste is because of dumb technology,” Spain said. “There are 45 million irrigation systems in the U.S. (controlled) by simple timers. They do a great job of keeping time but a lousy job of irrigating to what the land requires.”
City landscaping, or “urban irrigation,” makes up 58 percent of urban water use, Spain said, adding that the water wasted generates over 544,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases annually. Smart irrigation systems are programed to optimize water use based on parameters including plant and soil types and amount of sunlight, and also feature weather sensors that monitor soil moisture levels following rainfall.
“U.S. water-related energy use is at least 521 million megawatt hours a year — equivalent to 13 percent of the nation’s electricity consumption,” said a River Network Carbon Footprint of Water report published in May. “The carbon associated with moving, treating and heating water in the U.S. is at least 290 million tonnes a year.”
Climate change also affects water levels, with western states experiencing their driest years since records began. This year marks the third of drought for the most-populous state of California where lawmakers are urging residents to take shorter showers and water lawns less frequently to cut consumption a fifth. Several studies found that smart irrigation systems command water savings of between 16 and 30 percent over traditional timer-based controllers, which come at a similar cost.
“It’s not like solar, lighting or other systems which require vast infrastructure changes,” Spain said, adding that his clients have saved $75 million in water cost savings.
Jennifer Riley-Chetwynd of Rain Bird said her company saw a corporate headquarters nearly halve water used for irrigation from 416,000 gallons per year to 214,000 gallons.
Over-watering also pollutes and damages buildings, drawing $375 million in insurance claims in California in 2005, according to the California Insurance Association. New California legislation makes smart irrigation controllers mandatory for new properties from 2012, Spain added.
BRITAIN
The United States is not alone with concerns over water.
A joint study published on Wednesday by the UK’s Energy Saving Trust and the Environment Agency warned that as new homes became more and more energy efficient, hot water use could overtake heating as the main cause of carbon emissions.
“Six percent of the UK’s annual carbon emissions are related to water use—nearly 90 percent of that is from hot water use in the home,” the report said.
Britain’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee also issued a report on Wednesday to water regulator Ofwat warning that water scarcity will become “an increasingly critical issue in the South and East of England” and urging improved water efficiency.
(Editing by William Hardy)
It’s not only humans. The beluga whales in Canada’s St. Lawrence estuary are getting cancer, while those in the less-polluted Arctic waters are not. Fish in contaminated waters have tumors, but not those in clean water. Dogs that are exposed to herbicides from chemically treated lawns have more cancers than those that are not. In her book detailing the global reach of environmental pollution, Devra Davis reported that polar bears in the Arctic have major body burdens of carcinogens, and that out of 100 of the Arctic’s largest land-based mammals is reported to be a hermaphrodite. It can’t get much clearer.
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| seals sunning on the beach |
The belugas have survived in the world’s northern waters for millions of years, eating octopus, crabs and fish. Now one in four of the st. Lawrence whales is dying from cancer, mostly intestinal. They are also having trouble reproducing. When scientists examined their bodies, the autopsies revealed high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which almost certainly came from an upstream aluminum smelter.
In Washington D.C., four blocks from the White House, the Registry of Tumors in Lower Animals has almost 4,000 specimens of cancer in fish, amphibians, reptiles and invertebrates collected by the Smithsonian and the National Cancer Institute. Epidemics of liver cancer have been found in 16 species of fish in 25 different polluted freshwater and saltwater locations, while in non-polluted waters, fish with cancer are almost non-existent.’ The same tumors have been found in bottom-feeding fish in industrialized and urbanized areas along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Canada.
Cancer in Sea Lions
During the 1960s and 1970s, persistent organic pollutants were dumped in California’s coastal waters, where they bio-accumulated through the food chain. Twenty years later, people started noticing dead and stranded California sea lions. When examined, 20 percent of the sea lions were found to have cancer of the urinary and genital tracts and toxic chemicals in their blubber that had accumulated through the anchovies, squid, salmon and mussels they ate.â€
Cancer in Dogs
A study of more than 8,000 dogs showed that canine bladder cancer was associated with their living in industrialized counties, mimicking the distribution of bladder cancer among humans. Between 1975 and 1995 the incidence of bladder cancer in dogs examined at veterinary teaching schools in North America increased six-fold. Scottish terriers, Shetland sheepdogs, wirehaired fox terriers and West Highland white terriers had a higher risk than mixed breeds, suggesting a genetic susceptibility to cancer among the terriers, but not a reason for the increase.
When the researchers interviewed the owners of Scottish terriers with bladder cancer, they found that dogs whose owners had used phenoxy acid herbicides on their lawns were 4 to 7 times more likely to have cancer than dogs whose owners had not. 6 Phenoxy acid is an active ingredient in 2,4-D, a widely used herbicide that has been linked to cancers, neurological impairment and reproductive problems.’
The “cancer in dogs†studies reveal the multifactorial nature of cancer. Their cancer is linked to the use of insecticidal flea and tick dips, but more so if the dogs were obese and lived near another source of pesticides.8 In the terrier study, the researchers found that when the Scotties ate green leafy vegetables three times a week, there was a 90 percent reduction in their risk of cancer.
Danger Ahead
We need to ring all the alarm bells about the accumulation of chemical wastes in the bodies of wildlife. The fire-retardant chemicals known as PDBEs have been found in every fish sampled in San Francisco Bay. They are similar to PCBs in their chemical structure, and the levels found in breast, blood and breast-milk samples of U.S. women are the highest in the world. Is it a coincidence that women in San Francisco also have the highest levels of breast cancer anywhere?
PDBEs have been linked to an array of adverse health effects, including the possibility of cancer. When Sweden noticed a 60-fold increase of PDBEs in human breast milk between 1972 and 1997, it led to a ban throughout the European Union. In the San Francisco Bay area, the level in breast milk is 12 to 300 times higher than it was in Sweden, but the chemical industry has blocked California’s attempts to legislate.
We have to fight back, if we want to regain our health and the health of the world’s wildlife.
Adapted from 101 Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic (New Society, 2007) by By Guy Dauncey, Liz Armstrong and Anne Wordsworth