Peru’s Northern Amazon: Blighted By The Toxic Legacy of Oil Contamination
The Achuar indigenous people live on the remote headwaters of the Amazon Rainforest on the Pastaza, Morona and Corrientes rivers, on both sides of the Peru-Ecuador border. On the Corrientes river in Peru, the Achuar have suffered devastating environmental and health impacts from 35 years of oil drilling in Block 1-AB.
Years of oil production in Peru’s northern Amazon has left indigenous people suffering malnutrition, sickness and social disruption. Since 1971, Los-Angles-based Occidental Petroleum, using practices outlawed in the U.S., pumped an average of 850,000 barrels a day of salty formation water and other toxic waste waters into local rivers with appalling consequences for local communities despite many legal efforts and court battles which has seen the powerful Oxy continue its destruction of this incredible nature paradise.
The long legacy of contamination in Peru’s Amazon rainforest caused by the greed of American Oil company OXY continues, but the Achuar’s luck might just be a bout to change. Occidental Petroleum Corporation (Oxy) must defend a lawsuit in the United States for contaminating the Peruvian rainforest for nearly 30 years, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday.
An Achuar Apu (chief). The red face paint is from the seed of the Achiote tree. Each Achuar man uses a unique collection of designs which vary for a day spent in a meeting, or a day spent hunting, or in days gone by, for war.
The proposed class action was filed on behalf of members of indigenous Achuar communities represented by Los Angeles-based Earth Rights International, Amazon Watch, and the law firm Schonbrun DeSimone Seplow Harris & Hoffman LLP.
The lawsuit accuses Oxy of causing severe injuries by knowingly dumping a daily average of 850,000 barrels of toxic wastewater into the tropical rainforest inhabited by the indigenous Achuar people of northern Peru over a 30-year period, as well as inducing acid rain from gas flaring, and improperly storing waste in unlined pits. The plaintiffs allege that these outdated practices caused widespread lead and cadmium poisoning, among other serious health impacts.
Occidental had convinced a lower court that the case should be litigated in Peru. The 9th Circuit disagreed, ruling that the case be heard in Los Angeles, Occidental’s headquarters. This is a huge win for the Achuar community and Amazon watch which could now see something actually being done. This ruling means that the Achuar will finally get their day in U.S. court and signals the end of the era when companies could destroy indigenous communities and their environment with impunity.
“Oxy will now face justice in the U.S. federal courts, rather than in a Peruvian legal system that has never compensated indigenous groups for environmental contamination,”
said Marco Simons, legal director of Earth Rights International, in a press release.
In October 2007, a group of 25 Achuar Peruvians filed suit against Occidental, demanding clean-up and reparations for environmental damages allegedly caused by Occidental over 30 years.
That same year, Earth Right published jointly with Amazon Watch and the Peruvian organization Racimos de Ungurahui, A Legacy of Harm (see video above), which describes how Occidental’s operations discharged billions of barrels of untreated wastewater into local streams, caused numerous spills and resulted in many unremediated toxic waste sites in Achuar territory, with severe health and livelihood consequences for the Achuar.
The Achuar indigenous people have inhabited the northeastern Peruvian Amazon for thousands of years, living in a symbiotic relationship with their territory, dependent on the natural resource base for their survival and livelihood.
