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BOROUGH PRESIDENT DECLARES SOLIDARITY WITH TRIBAL LEADERS FIGHTING MASSIVE AMAZON OIL SPILL

Photographs by Kathryn Kirk
Pictured (from left to right): Secoya Nation President Humberto Piaguaje; Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz; Huaroni tribal leader Manuela Ima.

Clean up by oil companies demanded from Ecuador’s rainforest to Brooklyn’s Newtown Creek.

Today, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz welcomed tribal leaders from Ecuador’s Amazon jungle to Brooklyn’s Borough Hall to declare solidarity with their legal battle to clean up an oil disaster larger than that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez in Alaska. Markowitz was joined on the Borough Hall steps by Humberto Piaguaje, President of the Secoya Nation; Manuela Ima, a leader of the Huaroni tribe; and Luis Yanza, president of the Amazon Defense Front.

Ecuadorian tribes have been engaged in a legal struggle with ChevronTexaco for more than a decade to remediate the dumping of 18.5 billion gallons of oil — more than 150% more than spilled in the Valdez incident — on their land in open waste pits from 1971 to 1992. The Ecuadorians refer to the dumping as the “Rainforest Chernobyl.”

Borough President Markowitz drew parallels between the Ecuadorian’s struggle and the lawsuit filed in January by Brooklyn and Queens residents and groups against ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and others under the Clean Water Act. The suit seeks damages to clean up an oil spill under Newtown Creek (which divides western Brooklyn and Queens) that has leaked 17 million gallons of oil into the Creek since an underground explosion in 1950. Brooklyn City Council Member David Yassky and Queens Council Member Eric Gioia have joined the plaintiffs in the suit.

Markowitz hailed as courageous the lengthy journey that Manuela Ima traveled from her native town of Lago Agrio in the Ecuadorian jungle to Brooklyn: she walked for five days (including three canoe trips) from her jungle home to Quito, Ecuador’s capital, before flying to New York. He also noted that today marks the long-awaited opening of the court case against ChevronTexaco in Lago Agrio.

“Today, Brooklyn stands with the Ecuadorian Amazon in calling for accountability for the destruction of the environment, and in calling for responsibility to remediate the natural and human problems that this destruction has caused over the years,” Markowitz said. “Because whether you’re in Brooklyn or the Ecuadorian Amazon — you’ve got to clean up your act!”