As the oil giant prepares for new drilling operations in Australia, the country is beginning to question its toxic legacy. In "The Amazon's Toxic Mess," Sunday Night reporter Mike Monro joins Zoe Tryon to witness the devastation in Ecuador first hand.As Monro notes,"While Chevron is establishing its environmental credentials in Australia, in the Amazon,it’s fighting hard ball to avoid paying billions to clean up this toxic catastrophe."
The piece takes viewers right into the three meter deep pits of crude oil Chevron is refusing clean. In dramatic moments, the story demonstrates how Chevron contaminated the land and water and how that contamination has resulted in over 1,400 deaths and thousands more suffering from illnesses.
Check out the story here:
In her blog post on the story, Tryon goes into even more detail on the lengths Chevron has gone to cover up its legacy of polluting the Amazon. She illuminates the sad history of Chevron and Texaco's destruction of the land and how it has affected the indigenous people living in Ecuador:
"Over its 28 years of operation Texaco dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waters and waste crude directly into rivers and over 900 unlined toxic pits throughout the area impacting 30,000 indigenous people and farmers living in the area. These ‘formation waters’ contained some of the most dangerous chemicals known to man including Policyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH’s), benzene and toluene. One court-ordered technical report on file in Lago Agrio court house concludes that Texaco's pollution caused 2,091 cases of cancer among residents and led to 1,401 deaths from 1985 to 1998."
As Tryon notes, Chevron is "the largest holder of natural gas resources in Australia." If Chevron is willing to leave the people of Ecuador with a toxic waste dump in their backyards, what will it do to Australia?