Article
Ecuador, Chevron and pollution - Justice or extortion?
At issue is waste dumped by Texaco (bought by Chevron in 2001) as long ago as the 1960s in the region around Lago Agrio in the Ecuadorean jungle...In 1992 Petroecuador took over the whole operation...In a suit first filed in a New York court in 1993, lawyers representing 30,000 people in the Lago Agrio area argued that billons of gallons of waste...caused damage to human health as well as to the jungle...[and] forced displacement...Chevron has filed a 9,000-page rebuttal of [court-appointed expert]’s report...The judge in Lago Agrio, Juan Nuñez, is expected to rule on the case later this year. He has made no secret of his sympathy for the plaintiffs...Texaco may have benefited from Ecuador’s past lack of environmental standards.