Ecuador: Chevron Named in $27 Billion Contamination Case

The so-called remediation, performed by Texaco between 1995 and 1998, consisted largely of dumping dirt over a small portion of the 916 unlined pools of toxic waste to hide them from local residents, said Fajardo. All 45 of the "remediated" sites previously inspected during the trial showed extensive and illegal levels of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPHs), some thousands of times higher than Ecuadorian norms, according to a damages assessment produced in April 2008 by a team of court-appointed experts.

The results are consistent with the damages assessment from April 2008, which found that 100% of the 94 Chevron well sites previously inspected during the trial were extensively contaminated with cancer-causing toxins, some at rates hundreds of times higher than permitted by Ecuadorian law.

Texaco's waste dumping sites are spread across an area the size of Rhode Island that contains major rivers that feed into the Amazon River in Brazil. The lawsuit contends that in 20 years of operations in Ecuador, Texaco dumped billions of gallons of toxic wastewater into pits or into rivers. The oil company counters that it spent millions of dollars in cleanup efforts.