Oil spill | In the Ecuadorian Amazon, residents see the heavy damage

(Puerto Maderos) Patties in the water, blackish and sticky stains on the sand: on the banks of the Coca River, the inhabitants observe, helpless, the oil pollution on the outskirts of their small jungle village of Puerto Maderos, in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

“This damage is not for one or two months, it will take 20 years” to return to the nature before: the lament of Bolivia Buenano, a 40-year-old trader, sums up the state of mind of this community of 700 souls , lost in the forest.

No one can “bathe normally in the river, nor drink the water from here. There’s no more fish, there’s nothing left,” grumbles Bolivia, wearing yellow plastic boots and work overalls.

Nearly 6,300 barrels of oil, or more than a million liters, spilled further upstream in an environmental reserve, about 100 kilometers east of the capital Quito after the rupture of an oil pipeline at the end of the last week.

OCP, the company that operates the pipeline, claims to have “collected and reinjected 5,300 barrels of oil into the system”, or 84% of the crude spilled. The oil was collected in emergency retention basins in the area of ​​the incident by teams of workers armed with earthmoving machinery.

About 21,000m² of the Cayambe-Coca reserve were affected, a reserve that is home to a wide variety of mammals, birds and amphibians. The crude first flowed into the Quijos River, then into the Coca, a major river in the Amazon which itself flows into a river, the Napo, according to the official report from the Ministry of the Environment.

Despite the reassuring assertions of the OCP, the traces of the oil spill extend for kilometers, in this area of ​​mountains covered with jungles. Well downstream, at the edge of the Coca, in fact a wide river looking like a real river, the rains and the strength of the current have however already carried away the bulk of the water table.

“We are tired because it’s not a normal life,” continues Bolivia. “It is no longer a healthy nature, it is a contaminated nature. And this will continue as long as the pipeline and the oil network continue to be there, ”she criticizes, contemplating, seated, the waters of the river.

She continues by denouncing the lack of investment by the State in these Amazonian provinces which concentrate great oil wealth, but are also the most affected by these repeated ecological disasters.

“Forgotten by God”

In May 2020, in this same area of ​​Piedra Maderos, some 15,000 barrels had already spilled into three rivers, including the Coca, during a similar incident: an oil pipeline damaged by falling rocks caused by heavy rains which regularly descend on this region bathed in water.

As the clean-up work progresses, large oil-soiled sausage-shaped buoys and barrels of salvaged waste pile up on the sand.

The workers go from one bank to the other in boats carrying sandbags stained with crude, which they pile up here and there while waiting to evacuate them. Ironically, butterflies circle around this waste.

Outrage spreads from mouth to mouth. “We are forgotten by God,” criticizes Rosa Capinoa, leader of an organization of indigenous communities (Fecunae) who accompanied AFP on a tour of the affected areas.

“I know it’s not something that can be recovered overnight, it will take a long time. […]. Look ! This whole natural disaster is very sad”.

The OCP supplied drinking water to the affected populations, given the probable contamination of the springs.

“The oil comes from here, from our regions, and we, as communities, do not benefit from anything. Just a few plastic water bottles and reservoirs”, denounces M^me Capinoa.

“We are outraged because we experience this every two or three years,” adds Romel Buenaño, a 35-year-old farmer.

In Puerto Maderos, he recalls, the 2020 disaster shut down fishing for months and killed wildlife in the islets of Coca. “Cleaning will not end the contamination,” he insists.