Chevron Calls Ecuadoran Natives “Irrelevant”

Chevron Loses Appeal To Block $18 Billion Fine For Environmental Damages

Chevron is apparently trying to get out of paying an $18 billion judgment to 30,000 Ecuadoran rainforest residents, for creating “one of the world’s largest oil-related environmental disasters,” aka Chevron’s Chernobyl in the Amazon. Yes, this is bigger than the BP f*@k up, only it happened 19-years ago and they’ve been trying to keep it on the down-low ever since.

Chevron attorney, Doak Bishop of King & Spalding, said, “The plaintiffs are really irrelevant. They always were irrelevant. There were never any real parties in interest in this case… There will be no prejudice to [the rainforest communities] or any individual by holding up enforcement of the judgment.”

If Chevron decides to pay up, the money will go towards clean-up of the contamination, (something that Chevron has been promising to do and hasn’t) and will help to provide “clean drinking water and health care services for people living in Chevron’s former concession area.”

From 1964 to 1992, Chevron, then Texaco, drilled for oil in the area, deliberately dumping “billions of gallons of toxic wastewater into the rivers and streams, spilled millions of gallons of crude oil, and abandoned hazardous waste in hundreds of unlined open-air pits littered throughout the region.” All of which has resulted in the “widespread devastation of the rainforest ecosystem and local indigenous communities.” Not to mention the hundreds of people who have died of cancer, and the thousands of people who suffer from “respiratory illnesses, deformities, skin disease, spontaneous abortions, and other ailments,” due to the contamination.

Chevron apparently has no remorse for the disaster it caused and has no problem letting the world know that the people they harm with their toxic waste are irrelevant. Something that buyers of Chevron gas should keep in mind.

Find out more about what you can do to help at ChevronToxico.

Read more at TDA, Amazon Watch here and here, and the Huffington Post.