Message-ID: <Pine.A32.3.91.961218172122.19837B-100000@paris> Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 17:22:43 -0700 From: "J.C. WANDEMBERG" <mailto:juwandem@NMSU.EDU> Subject: National Call In Day For Texaco, December 19, 1996 (fwd) To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 06:00:09 -0500 From: Jonathan Luman <mailto:LUMANS@worldnet.att.net> To: ENVIRONMENT IN LATIN AMERICA NETWORK <mailto:elan@csf.colorado.edu> Subject: National Call In Day For Texaco, December 19, 1996On DECEMBER 19, 96....CALL UP TEXACO (1 (800) 552-7827)
TELL THEM TO CLEAN UP THE MESS THEY CAUSED IN THE ECUADORIAN RAINFOREST! Save the Rainforest, Boycott Texaco "Star" Polluter of The Ecuadorian Rainforest
Why boycott Texaco?
For 20 years, Texaco pumped oil from the Ecuadorian rainforest, one of the Earth's gems of biodiversity, and home to 300,000 Quichua, Siona, Secoya, Cofan, Shuar, and Huaorani Indigenous people. After extracting more than one billion barrels of crude oil, Texaco washed its hands and pulled out of Ecuador in 1992, leaving behind a colossal mess of toxic waste pits, oil spills, and poisoned communities. Texaco's legacy to Ecuador:
Spills totalling 17 million gallons of crude oil (50% more than the Exxon Valdez spill) Discharge of 20 billion gallons of wastewater, with hydro-carbons, heavy metals and other toxic contaminants Abandonment of hundreds of unlined toxic waste ponds Construction of oil roads opening more than 2.5 million acres of the forest to colinization
Besides extensive damage to rainforest ecosystems, Texaco's operations have affected the people of the Amazon, who use river and rain water for bathing, drinking, and fishing. Skin diseases, stomach ailments, respiratory diseases, headaches, malnutrition, and cancer have surfaced in Native communities affected by Texaco's operations.
Yet, Texaco refuses to cleanup, or even to compensate those people whose lives have been affected by their dirty operations!
Is Texaco as destructive worldwide as it has been in Ecuador? Texaco is America's third largest oil company, with 1992 revenues of $37 billion. They are drilling for oil in 24 countries, and their international holdings include refineries, petrochemical plants, and an international trading and transportation network. Texaco also owns gasoline stations and convenience stores around the world, including 14,000 in the U.S. alone.
Wherever they work, Texaco has demonstrated irresponsibility and lack of concern for public health, human rights, and the global environment:
Burma: Texaco collaborates with the brutal Burmese military dictatorship in an offshore natural gas project. In order to construct a pipeline through the rainforest, the army has declared "free-fire nes" in which soldiers are authorized to shoot civilians, including members of the Karen hilltribe. Indonesia: Pollution from Texaco's Caltex operations has killed fish in Siak River tributaries, destroyed rubber trees near the streams, and caused skin diseases among Sungai Limau villagers. Haiti: Texaco has blatantly violated the U.N. oil embargo, designed to pressure Haiti's military dictatorship.
How about here in the U.S.?
Texaco's record in the U.S. is no better than overseas, even though stricter environmental regulations have generally held them more accountable for their pollution:
Port Neches, Texas: A Texaco chemical plant discharged the cancer-causing butadiene into the air, bombarding residents with more carcinogens than any other plant in the country. Southern California & Virginia: Texaco was responsible for major oil spills, and were fined by the federal government for improper storage of hazardous wastes. Wilmington, California: A Texaco refinery exploded, forcing evacuation of 600 residents of a primarily Latino and African-American community near Los Angeles. Texaco ignored warnings about plant safety, and now refuses to provide health care to the accident victims.
More often than not, Texaco's irresponsibility affects people with little political or economic power. Texaco's destruction of the homeland of Indigenous people in Ecuador and callous disregard for the health and safety of people of color in California are clear instances of the company's environmental racism. To Texaco, the lives and well-being of these people do not matter.
What must Texaco do?
1.Submit to a comprehensive, independent, public investigation, with full participation by Ecuadorian Indigenous peoples' and environmental groups, to determine the full social and environmental impacts of Texaco's operations in Ecuador. 2.Perform a thorough cleanup of the Ecuadorian rainforest, including plugging all abandoned wells, cleanup of toxic waste ponds, restoration of well sites, reforestation of cleared areas, and removal of standing oil and contaminated soil, in a plan designed in consultation with local communities. 3.Where environmental destruction is irreversible, Texaco must provide affected communities with health care, clean drinking water, and funds for community development. 4.Texaco must work with the government of Ecuador to repair corroded pipelines and modernize the obsolete oil infrastructure, in order to prevent further disasters, and to decrease routine contamination from oil operations.