Ecuador’s Amazon residents are boiling after a new oil spill | Environmental News

On the banks of the Coca River in Ecuador, there is oil in the water, rocks and sand that children normally play with.

Residents of Puerto Madero made no effort to hide their anger at the latest gross spill that hit the Ecuadorian Amazon.

“This damage is not going to be a month, two months … it will be 20 years before things return to normal,” said Bolivia Buenano, a trader about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the spill.

Buenano joined a clean-up group assembled by the OCP oil transport company, whose pipeline was responsible for the leak, to provide agility to the community of about 700 people.

No one can “normally bathe in the river, nor drink from here, there is no fish, there is nothing,” he said while cleaning the contaminated containment buoy.

Buenano complained that there is no state investment in the Amazon provinces, which have a large share of the country’s oil wealth but are most affected by industrial disasters like this.

On Friday, almost 6,300 barrels of oil Filtered to an eastern environmental reserve in Ecuador, when heavy rains caused a stone to fall on top of a pipe.

Cesar Benalcazar was one of several people who went to the place to stop the flow of oil.

“We tried to keep the crude from reaching the river, but the slope was going down like a waterfall,” said 24-year-old Benalcazar.

The OCP said more than 84 percent of the gross was recovered.

But the Cayambe Coca Nature Reserve polluted about 21,000 square meters (226,000 square feet) of raw water and dumped it into the Coca River, one of the largest in the Amazon of Ecuador and an important source for many coastal communities.

Rains and currents spread the stain for several miles.

“We’re tired because this isn’t a normal life. Nature is not healthy, it is polluted, ”Buenano said.

“And that will continue as long as the pipelines and crude oil networks continue.”

In 2020, a mudslide damaged about 15,000 barrels of oil spills into three rivers in the Amazon Basin, affecting several communities.

Crude oil is Ecuador’s largest export product.

Between January and November 2021, the country produced 494,000 barrels a day.

Buenano and the rest of the cleaning crew murmured angrily as they filled the containers with contaminated sand, which they piled up together for later removal.

Neighbors say the spill has spread to the Coca River, and rain and currents have spread for miles [Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment via AFP]

“We have forgotten God,” said Rosa Capino, head of the Fecunae Indigenous organization, which is visiting the affected areas.

“I know this is not something that can be fixed overnight, it will take a long time. It is very painful to look at this natural disaster, ”he told AFP.

“Oil comes out of here, and as a community we don’t share in the profits. All we get is a bottle of water, water tanks, ”added Capino in response to the OCP’s response to providing drinking water to affected populations.

According to the Ecuadorian Ministry of the Environment, Friday’s spill occurred within the Cayambe Coca Reserve of about 403,000 hectares (996,000 acres), home to a vast collection of animals and plants.

From there, it spread to the Coca River.

“We feel pretty angry because we live every two or three years,” said Romel Buenano, a 35-year-old Puerto Madero farmer who has no relatives in Bolivia.

The 2020 disaster, he said, put an end to fishing for a time, killing animals on the Coca Islands.

“It’s not like the pollution is over,” he told AFP.