The damage will last “a long time”: residents outraged by oil leak in Ecuador

The oil is in the water, in the stones and blackened the sand where the children play. On the banks of the Coca River, in Puerto Maderos, angry residents deal with the most recent spill that affected the Ecuadorian Amazon.

LOOK: The oil “shot out” into the river: the disaster looms in the Ecuadorian Amazon after a leak in the Heavy Crude Oil Pipeline

A 40-year-old trader, Bolivia Buenaño expresses the lament of many in this community of 700 inhabitants: “This damage is not for a month, two months, about 20 years will pass and (only then) will it remain as it was before.”

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Due to the leak that occurred on Friday in a nature reserve, far from the town where he has lived for 28 years, the private company OCP hired cleaning teams.

Buenaño, with his always strong gesture, assures that it was out of necessity that he agreed to join the task, but the extra income does not undermine his anger.

No one can “bath normally in the river, or drink water from here, there are no more fish, there is nothing,” he emphasizes.

While scrubbing a huge containment buoy, the woman complains about the lack of state investment in the Amazon provinces, which paradoxically concentrate great oil wealth but, at the same time, are the most affected by industry disasters.

“We are tired because it is not a normal life. It is no longer a healthy nature, it is polluted. And this is going to continue as long as the pipeline and the crude oil network continue”, she comments sitting on the river bank.

In 2020, a collapse destroyed sections of the pipeline and caused a leak of some 15,000 barrels that polluted the Coca River.

In the most recent emergency, caused by rocks that fell from the mountain and punctured the pipeline that OCP operates, 6,300 barrels were spilled.

Although the company assures that it managed to recover a large part of the crude, the trail of the spill extends for kilometers.

The rains and the force of the current have washed away the stain that caused the pipeline to rupture in Piedra Fina, a mountain range located about 80 km east of Quito and on the border between the Amazonian provinces of Napo and Sucumbíos.

– “Forgotten by God” –

As the cleaning tasks progress, the buoys stained with crude oil and the barrels with the recovered waste are left in the sand.

The workers cross by boat from one shore to the other with sacks full of sand and oil that they stack at another point. Only the butterflies approach the waste, while the outrage goes from mouth to mouth.

“We are God’s forgotten ones,” grumbles Rosa Capinoa, leader of the Fecunae indigenous community organization that accompanied AFP on a tour of affected areas.

“I know that this is not something that can be recovered overnight, it will last a long time (…) Looking at all this natural disaster is a great shame,” the woman reaffirms.

The company Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados ​​(OCP) brought water to the affected populations, due to the contamination of the sources.

“The oil comes from here and we as communes have not had a benefit. What they have always supported us with is a bottle of water, some water tanks,” Capinoa claims.

According to the Environment Ministry, the spill at Piedra Fina occurred within the Cayambe-Coca National Park, a 403,000-hectare reserve that is home to a wide variety of mammals, birds and amphibians.

The contamination affected at least two hectares and advanced through the Quijos River to the Coca, according to the official report.

“We feel quite indignant because we experience this every two or three years,” remarks Romel Buenaño, a 35-year-old farmer.

In Puerto Maderos, he recalls, the 2020 disaster extinguished fishing for a time and killed wildlife on the Coca islets.

“It is not that with the cleanup the contamination is over,” he insists.

Before nature finishes remedying the disaster, the villagers believe that another stain will go down the river.

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Source: Elcomercio

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