Ecuador keeps up oil cleanup fight against Chevron

[Judi Lynn]

Ecuador keeps up oil cleanup fight against Chevron
The oil giant says it already cleaned up its share of the mess in the Amazon region, but peasant farmers continue to suffer.
By Chris Kraul
November 17, 2008

http://www.latimes.com.nyud.net:8090/media/photo/2008-11/43414487.jpg

Chris Kraul / Los Angeles Times
Abel Garrido stands near his oil-polluted pond in Coca, Ecuador. “I’ve lost
30 cows,” Garrido says. “I cut them open and their insides are black.”

Reporting from Coca, Ecuador -- Abel Garrido has just struck oil and he's not happy about it.

Using a tree branch, the weathered farmer probed the edge of a pond that his cattle use for drinking water and soon turned up the smelly black sludge that he says has killed much of his livestock and sickened his family.

~snip~
Paying the medical bills to treat his three children for skin cancer has cost him his meager savings.

"Here's the cause," Garrido said, contemplating the dark slime gleaming on the end of the branch.

The contamination at Garrido's farm and hundreds of others in a Rhode Island-sized area here in the Ecuadorean Amazon is the basis of a controversial, long-running civil lawsuit in which a verdict is expected early next year.

~snip~
"Texaco used the pristine Amazon rain forest as a garbage can," said Steven Donziger, a New York-based environmental attorney who represents the Ecuadoreans.

More:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-amazonoil17-2008nov17,0,7299994.story