{"id":1947,"date":"2022-05-19T13:46:23","date_gmt":"2022-05-19T20:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inquirefirst.org\/montanasyselva\/proyectos\/huellas-del-petroleo\/?p=1947"},"modified":"2022-07-19T15:06:24","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T22:06:24","slug":"oil-spills-trigger-a-cascade-of-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inquirefirst.org\/montanasyselva\/proyectos\/traces-of-oil\/en\/oil-spills-trigger-a-cascade-of-consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil spills trigger a cascade of consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n
\n \n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n\n
\n

Oil spills trigger a
cascade of consequences <\/h1>\n\n <\/div>\n \n <\/i><\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
Seasonal flood waters inundate the Urarina village of Nueva Uni\u00f3n, leaving virtually no dry ground. People use canoes to visit neighbors or go to school, and with no place high enough for crops, food is scarce. Photo: Ginebra Pe\u00f1a<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
\n\n\n
\n

By Barbara Fraser<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

\n\n
\n\n
\n

Share:<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n

\n <\/i><\/span><\/a>\n \n <\/div>\n
\n <\/i><\/span><\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
\n\n

When a slick of oil and dead fish drifted down the Cuninico River in late June 2014, residents of the village of Cuninico could not foresee what a spill from a nearby oil pipeline would mean for their community of some 80 families. Eight years later, the fishery that sustained the villagers hasn\u2019t recovered, health care promised by the government in response to a lawsuit by the affected communities was only partly delivered, and payment for damages is still pending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThings are difficult,\u201d said C\u00e9sar Mozombite, a leader of the community of Cuninico, on the riverbank where the narrow Cuninico joins the Mara\u00f1\u00f3n River in Peru\u2019s northeastern Loreto region. \u201cThere\u2019s a scarcity of food. We lost the fish. Many fathers and young people are leaving the community to work to support their families. Life is hard here now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For people living in Peru\u2019s Amazonian oil fields, spills from wells and pipelines have been followed by a cascade of consequences. Some, like tarry residue and discarded equipment, are visible. Others, like economic upheaval, are less obvious at first glance. And there is persistent uncertainty about the long-term impacts of oil spills on the environment and human health, as well as about how \u2014 or whether \u2014 the environmental damage will be cleaned up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cesar-Mozombite\"
C\u00e9sar Mozombite of the mainly Kukama community of Cuninico, on the lower Mara\u00f1\u00f3n River, says oil spills have brought economic hardship to the affected communities. Photo: Ginebra Pe\u00f1a<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Compared to some of the world\u2019s most infamous oil spills, like the Exxon Valdez in the United States or the Prestige off the coast of Spain, the one upstream from the Kukama Indigenous village of Cuninico was small \u2014 some 2,300 barrels of oil leaked into the canal that\u2019s meant to keep spills contained. But in this part of the world, where most villagers rely on surface water for drinking, cooking and bathing and have no way of removing industrial contaminants, even a small spill is disastrous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Cuninico, the oil spill triggered a series of impacts, some of which were evident immediately \u2014 like the oil-soaked fish, birds and vegetation \u2014 and others that crept in over the subsequent weeks and months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although they lived near what had been some of the area’s richest fishing grounds, overnight the villagers lost both their main source of protein and their livelihood, as traders shunned their fish. People were afraid to draw water from the river, which had been their primary source, and mothers worried about their families\u2019 health. Eight years later, those fears persist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the government, the events marked a change in the way the state-owned oil company Petroper\u00fa, which operates the pipeline, handled spills. Immediately after the oil slick was discovered, the company hired men from the community to find the rupture in the pipeline, which by then was under more than three feet of water and thick oil. The men immersed themselves in the oily water as they sought the break, wearing ordinary clothes as they were given no protective gear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A report<\/a> broadcast by Channel 5, a Lima-based television channel with a nationwide reach, which also revealed that several minors were among the laborers, forced the replacement of Petroper\u00fa’s entire board of directors. The company also began working with contractors who were required to provide protective equipment to workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cleanup created jobs that paid the equivalent of around $25 a day, more than seven times the usual local rate for day labor. The pay, which was a magnet for outsiders seeking work, also set off a round of inflation. Flor de Mar\u00eda Parana, Cuninico\u2019s \u201cIndigenous mother,\u201d or women\u2019s representative, said the price of eggs rose from five for one Peruvian sol, equivalent to about 30 cents, to two for a sol, and then a sol a piece. Even after the cleanup work ended and the jobs went away, prices never quite returned to their pre-spill levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaders of Cuninico and three other communities that had fished in the same area filed lawsuits demanding health care and indemnification for lost livelihoods and environmental damage. They argued their case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, where Parana brandished a bottle<\/a> filled with oily water at representatives of the Peruvian government and state-owned Petroper\u00fa. So far, however, promises of aid have gone largely unfulfilled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the cleanup, oil remains in the sediment under the pipeline. The same is true in other communities in the Mara\u00f1\u00f3n River watershed that have suffered spills from the Northern Peruvian Pipeline, which runs through Cuninico and dozens of other communities along its route to the coast, or from pipelines in Lots 192 and 8, the oldest and largest oil fields in Peru’s Loreto region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oil remains in sediment<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Heavy seasonal rains cause rivers to overflow their banks for months at a time, depositing crucial nutrient-bearing sediments in the forests, but also washing contaminants through Loreto\u2019s vast, biodiverse and hydrologically complex wetlands, where villagers depend on the rivers and forests for sustenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rainy season in Loreto runs roughly from November through May, and by early April this year water had risen past the first floor of the several dozen wood frame houses in Nueva Uni\u00f3n, an Urarina village on the Chambira River, a tributary of the Mara\u00f1\u00f3n. As the river rose, families had gathered their possessions and moved to the second floors of their tin-roofed homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the back of each house, the kitchen platform, with a square, sand-filled pit for the traditional three-log fire, remained above the water level, as ducks paddled beneath the floorboards and chickens roosted in coops built on stilts.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n\n
<\/div>\n
\n

\u201c In 40 years of oil production,
\n there\u2019s been no development
\n for the Indigenous people
\n of the Chambira \u201d<\/h1>\n

Gilberto Inuma Arahuata<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

\n\n
Roberto L\u00f3pez, vice president of the Urarina Indigenous organization FEPIURCHA, guides his boat past houses in the community of Nueva Uni\u00f3n during the high-water season. Photo: Ginebra Pe\u00f1a<\/figcaption>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

Until the water level dropped again, all outdoor activity \u2014 from visiting neighbors to going to school \u2014 would be done by canoe. In front of most houses, a small floating platform of logs lashed together doubled as a boat dock and place for washing clothes and bathing. Children splashed in the water in the heat of the day, while older kids played a sort of water polo around half submerged soccer goal posts beside the wooden elementary school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the middle of the community, two aging pipelines rose from the flooded forest then disappeared under the river, emerging again beside a control cabin on the far bank. The pipeline carries crude oil from oil wells upstream to Petroper\u00fa\u2019s pumping station No. 1 at the town of Saramuro, on the Mara\u00f1\u00f3n River. On a sunny afternoon, someone had hung a freshly washed blanket over one of the pipes to dry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n \n \n
Graphic: Ferm\u00edn Garc\u00eda<\/figcaption>\n <\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Not far from the community, along the pipeline route, an oil spill nearly a decade ago was inadequately cleaned up, community members say. The spot is under water at this time of year, but community leaders have photos from the dry season that show crude mixed with the soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Residents of Nueva Uni\u00f3n and Nuevo Per\u00fa, slightly downriver, worry about what happens to that polluted sediment when the rains come and the river rises. Children and adults suffer from stomach pains and diarrhea, but it\u2019s hard to tell whether that is caused by industrial contaminants or coliforms that may drift out of flooded latrines, or whether it\u2019s a combination of the two. Peru\u2019s water quality standards for Amazonian rivers do not take into account the number of people throughout the region for whom the waterways are the only source of drinking water.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n\n\n
\n <\/a>\n\n <\/a>\n\n <\/a>\n\n <\/a>\n\n <\/a>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n \n <\/a>\n\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n <\/a>\n\n <\/a>\n\n <\/a>\n\n\n\n\n<\/a>\n\n\n\n\n\n <\/a>\n\n <\/a>\n\n <\/a>\n\n\n <\/a>\n\n\n <\/a>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n

Life on the Chambira: Photo Gallery<\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

As in the other watersheds throughout the Amazonian oil fields, the revenue from 50 years of oil production has not been invested in the construction of permanent potable water or sanitation systems in the communities closest to the pollution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of an agreement with the government, temporary water-treatment plants were installed in 2014 and 2015 in about 60 communities, but virtually all of the other communities along the rivers are drinking water from sources that are unfit for human consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plants were meant as a stopgap while permanent potable water systems were built, but those systems have yet to materialize. In communities that do have plants, parents say diarrheal diseases have decreased, but in larger communities, families living at a distance from the plant still resort to polluted surface water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of the communities in the lower part of the Chambira River received water treatment plants, so families in Nuevo Per\u00fa and Nueva Uni\u00f3n draw water from around their flooded houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been suffering from the pollution for many years,\u201d said Gilberto Inuma Arahuata, the 33-year-old president of the Federation of the Urarina Indigenous People of the Chambira River (FEPIURCHA, for its Spanish initials), who lives in Nueva Uni\u00f3n. \u201cThe water, soil and air are contaminated,\u201d he added, and because people depend on crops and fish, \u201cthe food we get is contaminated, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cassava-plants\"
An artificial island in Nueva Uni\u00f3n provides a refuge for cassava plants, which will be replanted when the water level drops. Nueva Uni\u00f3n and Nuevo Per\u00fa relocated to the Chambira River, where they do not have high ground for planting crops during the high-water season. Photo: Ginebra Pe\u00f1a<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Food, drinking water scarce in rainy season<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

During flood season, the lack of safe drinking water combines with other difficulties. In recent years, both Nueva Uni\u00f3n and Nuevo Per\u00fa relocated to the bank of the Chambira River from more distant tributaries, which were less accessible, but also less likely to be affected by industrial pollution from upstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although leaders of both communities say the decision was made by the villagers, researchers who have done extensive interviews in the lower Chambira say older residents were reluctant to relocate and that outsiders encouraged the communities to move so they could be reached more easily by government assistance programs, as well as by possible future development projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where they were before, the communities had higher ground for staple crops like corn, cassava and bananas. In their current locations, everything is underwater during the rainy season. They also had easier access to the palm swamps called aguajales<\/em>, where women collect shoots of the aguaje palm (Mauritia flexuosa<\/em>), which they use to weave textiles that recently have been recognized officially<\/a> for their cultural significance.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\n\n
\n