CALCULATED TO MISLEAD
         
Technical experts for both sides in the Ecuador Texaco (now Chevron) trial have taken soil and water samples to determine whether Texaco’s former sites are contaminated. While both sides are finding significant levels of toxins, Chevron’s technical experts are deliberately trying to hide the existence of life-threatening contaminants via a bogus sampling and analysis plan as summarized here.

Why is Chevron’s method for sampling soil bogus?

•    Uphill Samples to Avoid Finding Toxics
Chevron deliberately designs its sampling to avoid areas with high concentrations of contamination.  One technique is premised on the ludicrous notion that water and contaminants will naturally flow uphill.  Chevron takes samples from streams located up gradient from the contaminated pits so as to avoid surface and groundwater contamination, rather than taking downhill samples where the leachate from the pits flows according to the laws of gravity.

•    Composite Samples To Dilute Impact of Contamination
Another Chevron technique, which runs counter to sound scientific practice and EPA guidance, is to mix various soil samples together and analyze them as one sample to dilute the contamination.  Given the nature of the toxic dumping in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, Chevron should sample at “hotspots” where the highest levels of concentrations exist.  The EPA specifically states that Chevron’s composite sampling is inappropriate for sites where “indiscriminate dumping or the burying of wastes” has occurred.  Composite sampling produces a test result that is merely an average of the contamination at several sites, while grab sampling - taking distinct samples from each site - yields an accurate reading of the true level of contamination.

•    Surface Sampling to Avoid Toxins Beneath Soil
In several sites, Chevron limits its sampling to a few inches of “clean” topsoil that the company used to bury its toxic waste pits.  This method avoids finding the hydrocarbons underneath the bulldozed dirt.

How can Chevron claim it “remediated” pits when the pits still have illegal levels of contamination?

•    Using A Lab Test To Produce Fake Results
After its so-called “remediation” (clean-up operation) in Ecuador, Texaco fraudulently certified the results by using an inappropriate lab test to produce false results that underestimated the amount of contamination.  All environmental regulatory agencies advise that this test, the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP), should not be used for places where there is oily waste because the test yields deceptively low results.  In addition, when using the TCLP, Texaco almost never tested for other carcinogens such as benzene.  Texaco’s “results” therefore paint a false picture of the severity and breadth of the contamination.

•    Pit Closure TPH (Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons) standard of 10,000 ppm (parts per million)
Chevron arbitrarily selected a TPH standard of 10,000 ppm as the threshold for pit closure during its “remediation,” ignoring the pit closure standard of 100 ppm, frequently used in the U.S. (and ten times higher than Ecuadorian law). In addition, a pit closure standard must take into consideration groundwater conditions, soil type, presence of surface waters, and the use of these water sources by the local human population.  However, Chevron did none of this formative analysis and instead applied a meaningless standard such that “remediated” pits actually still posed a threat to humans and the environment.