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Oct 20, 2005

Contamination - Ecuador - Amazon Indians say Texaco left damage

ESTACION GUANTA, Ecuador -Tri City Herald/AP, by GONZALO SOLANO -Oct 20, 2005: -- About 50 Cofan Indians, some holding handkerchiefs over their faces to fend off an acrid chemical stench, gathered around two contaminated open pits they say were left behind and never adequately cleaned up by the former Texaco Corp. .. A 35-year-old Cofan woman stood near one of the black pools. Nearby was a marsh, covered by a dense layer of crude and toxic waste that the Cofan Indians say seeped into streams and rivers used for drinking water by almost half of their 900 people, driving them from the area... The plaintiffs had sought for years to have the case tried in the United States, fearing they would not receive a fair hearing in Ecuador's notoriously corrupt judicial system. But the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled in 2002 that the case should be heard in the country where the damage allegedly occurred... The plaintiffs allege that Texaco, which merged with Chevron Corp. in 2001 to become ChevronTexaco Corp., chose to cut costs between 1972 and 1990 by dumping 18.5 billion gallons of oily wastewater brought up by drilling into more than 600 open pits and streams in the Amazon jungle...

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