There is oil in the water, on the rocks and in the sand where children normally play on the banks of the Coca River in Ecuador.
Residents of Puerto Madero made no effort to hide their anger at the latest crude spill to hit the Ecuadorian Amazon.
“This damage is not for a month, two months… it will be 20 years” before things return to normal,” said Bolivia Buenano, a merchant from the area some 120km (75 miles) from where the spill occurred.
Buenano joined a clean-up crew put together by oil transport company OCP, whose pipeline was responsible for the leak, to bring some relief to the community of 700-odd people.
Buenano complained about a lack of state investment in the Amazon provinces, which hold much of the country’s oil wealth but are most affected by industrial disasters such as this one.
Read more:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/3/oil-everywhere-ecuador-amazonians-seethe-over-new-spill