Ecuador's Amazon Tribes Face Water Shortage Over Oil Spill

[Judi Lynn]

May 6, 2020
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE



In this file photo from a so-called “Toxic Tour” of the Amazon, Ecuadorean activist Donald Moncayo dips his gloved hand into oil from the soils of Lago Agrio 5, a site that Chevron said it remediated. (Courthouse News photo/Adam Klasfeld)


QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — Indigenous communities in Ecuador’s Amazon region are have filed a lawsuit against the government and oil companies over a massive oil spill polluting local rivers and depriving them of water.

The pollution in Orellana province near the Peruvian border followed an April 7 landslide that ruptured three pipelines, spewing 15,000 barrels of oil into nearby rivers including Amazon tributary the Napo, a community leader and an NGO said.

“The families living on the river banks are lacking food and no longer know where to find water to drink, or with which to bathe,” Marcia Andi, a Kichwa and leader of the Mushuk Llacta community told AFP by phone.

Around 27,000 indigenous people from the Kichwa and Shuar tribes living along the Coca and Napo rivers are affected by the spill, according to Maria Espinosa, a lawyer with the Amazon Frontlines NGO.

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