U.S. Water News Online
LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador -- The cost of cleaning up a stretch of Ecuador's Amazon jungle allegedly contaminated by Texaco has increased by six-fold, according to a consultant hired by the plaintiffs in a civil trial against San Ramon, Calif.-based ChevronTexaco.
Georgia-based environmental consultant David Russell told The Associated Press he conducted a one-month study which estimates the clean up costs at $6.5 billion -- up from previous estimates of $1 billion or less.
The plaintiffs allege that Texaco chose to cut costs by dumping 18.5 billion gallons of wastewater brought up during drilling into hundreds of open pits and streams instead of reinjecting it deep underground.
The American consultant said his estimate was based on the costs of cleaning up 627 pits, 125 miles of river bottom, 990 acres of swampland and underground water systems. The costs also include setting up laboratories and purchasing machinery, he said.
``If this had occurred in my country, they would have declared a national disaster a long time ago,'' Russell said.
The lawsuit, filed by 88 people representing 30,000 poor jungle settlers and Amazon Indians, came to Ecuador after a decade of winding through the U.S. legal system.
It seeks to force ChevronTexaco to pay for health monitoring and to clean up contamination that Texaco allegedly left behind when it pulled out of Ecuador. Texaco merged with Chevron in 2001.
The trial marks the first time a multinational oil company has been subjected to Ecuadorean jurisdiction for alleged environmental damage.
ChevronTexaco has said it followed Ecuadorean environmental laws and spent $40 million under a clean up agreement -- which was to include about 350 of the 600-some pits -- with the Ecuadorean government in 1995. The government certified the clean-up three years later.
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