***The actress and representatives of several groups say the firm’s operations in Peru left behind toxics that continue to contaminate an indigenous people’s waters.***
Wearing white hazmat suits and carrying brooms and mops, dozens of activists crowded the entrance to Occidental Petroleum’s headquarters in Westwood on Wednesday to demand that the company clean up toxic contamination they say it left behind in the rain forest of the Peruvian Amazon.
“Oxy, Oxy, clean up now!” chanted the protesters from various humanitarian organizations, including Amazon Watch and the Rainforest Action Network.
During the 30 years that the oil company operated in the Peruvian Amazon, activists claim, it dumped hundreds of thousands of barrels daily of toxic oil byproducts and wastewater into rivers and streams used by the indigenous Achuar people for drinking, bathing and fishing.
“The Achuar are a traditional indigenous community,” said Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch. “They drink the water from the rivers and streams; and the fish they catch – (now) when they cut open a fish it smells like oil, it’s stiff like cardboard and it tastes like oil, but they still eat it . . . There is not a supermarket in the middle of the Amazon.”
Occidental sold its local operations around 2000 to Argentine oil company Pluspetrol, and “at that time Pluspetrol took responsibility for all past, present and future operating conditions,” said Richard Kline an Occidental spokesman. “We have great empathy for the issues of the Achuar people, but to our knowledge there is no credible data indicating negative community health impacts resulting from our operations.”
But activists contend that Occidental shares in the responsibility for any damages.
“Oxy would like to say they’ve passed on the liability,” Soltani said.
Actress Daryl Hannah, who has starred in including “Kill Bill” and “Grumpy Old Men,” was at Wednesday’s mock cleanup wearing plastic blue wash gloves and carrying a bucket adorned with a skull and crossbones. Hannah said she had been to the Peruvian Amazon and witnessed the problems firsthand.
“The reality is these people are really dying of lead poisoning and cadmium,” Hannah said, adding that Occidental shareholders would probably pressure the company to act if they knew the extent of damage. “No one in their right mind would think this is acceptable.”
Amazon Watch, EarthRights International, and the Venice firm Schonbrun, DeSimone, Seplow, Harris & Hoffman, among others, took the case to court in May 2007 after staging similar protests. Recently, a federal judge ruled that the case should be heard in Peru, not the United States.
Henderson Rengifo, a 27-year-old Achuar who lives in the area of the Amazon where Occidental drilled, made the trip from Peru to Westwood for Wednesday’s mock cleanup and plans to be at the company’s shareholders meeting Friday.
“They contaminated our land. They contaminated our rivers; the rivers are our way of life,” Rengifo said. “We are here today to say we will never remain quiet.”
