SOUTH AMERICA

Cousteau weighs into Chevron-Ecuador case

ECUADORIAN authorities are ramping up the celebrity battle against Chevron, with filmmaker Alexandra Cousteau to visit areas that Texaco – now part of Chevron – allegedly contaminated.

Cousteau weighs into Chevron-Ecuador case

The granddaughter of explorer Jacques Cousteau will visit hot on the heels of similar visits by actor Danny Glover, oil expert Antonia Juhasz and the Mayor of Richmond, California, Gayle McLaughin.

Actress-musician Cher also published a video to support the affected communities and promoted a boycott in the US against Chevron.

Human rights activist Bianca Jagger wrote an article and accompanied a group of Ecuadorians in a protest in New York against judicial action Chevron had taken against the affected and their lawyers in a New York court.

Cousteau's visit is part of a campaign launched by Ecuador President Rafael Correa on September 17 to "inform the world about the environmental disaster left by Chevron when it operated there between 1964 and 1990".

The Ecuadorian government is alleging Texaco used the wrong methods to manage the toxic waste resulting from oil drilling, deliberately spilling 68,400 litres of toxic water and derivatives in unprotected pools. This, it says, contaminated the soil, rivers and aquifers in the areas it operated.

Cousteau will visit one of the sites where Chevron-Texaco operated to verify the contamination caused by these pools that had no protection in the rain forest.

Chevron and the Ecuadorian authorities have been involved in a bitter legal dispute in both the US and Ecuadorian courts.

In February 2011, a court in Sucumbios ordered Chevron pay $US18.3 ($A20) million for environmental contamination and for affecting the health of the residents.

Chevron has not paid, saying, among other things that the judicial order was obtained by fraud by the attorneys representing the people.

Just before that ruling Chevron sued the people and their attorneys and that trial started on October 15.

The defendants in that case have accused Judge Lewis Kaplan of siding with the oil company and of repeatedly acting against the Ecuadorian defendants in the partial rulings before the trial.

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