Peruvians clean up the Repsol oil spill in the sea with their own hands

Párida Ríos Delgado, 33, lives in a precarious little house on a sandy hill near Playa Cavero, the area most damaged by the contamination caused last Saturday by a Repsol oil spill in the Ventanilla district (in the region Callao, in the central west of Peru), and that until this Friday affected 1,800 square kilometers of beach strip and 7,139 square kilometers of sea, according to the environmental authority. She is dedicated to fishing and is one of the hundreds of volunteers who have turned to the shores of the central coast of the country to remove crude oil, given the slowness of the company to contain the damage that spreads every day towards the north coast. .

“We fished to eat and we also sold to our neighbors in Puerto Pachacútec [also located in Ventanilla], we are a group from here who have come to clean the beach,” says Ríos, who is carrying two plastic containers and a mask. Minutes later, with her neighbor Mariela Cóndor (47), they fill the small buckets with the oil extracted from a hollow, next to some rocks on the shore. "We've been coming here for two days now, we don't know what's going to happen to the little animals," adds the citizen from Loreto, the Amazon region most affected by oil spills. The environmental devastation has reached two protected natural areas, the Reserved Zone of Ancón and the National Reserve System of Guaneras Islands, Islets and Points.

Every day, artisanal fishermen from three districts station themselves outside the offices of the La Pampilla refinery, operated by Repsol, in Ventanilla, waiting for food to survive on days lost without going to sea.

Almost a week after the spill, they still had not received anything, commented the fishermen on Thursday while waiting for news from their leaders who had entered a meeting with company representatives.

In the districts that were initially affected there were about 700 fishermen, but as the contamination advanced to the north, the district municipality of Chancay reported another 2,000 injured on Friday.

Volunteer workers clean up the oiled shorelines at Playa Cavero.

Leslie Moreno

The spill occurred last Saturday at a refinery terminal, hours after the eruption of an underwater volcano in Tonga. The company reported on Sunday that "the violence of the waves" occurred during the unloading of crude oil from the Italian ship Mare Dorium, and noted that it was a "limited spill." Repsol declared at the beginning of the week to the Prosecutor's Office that the spill was seven gallons (26.5 liters), and a couple of days later the Environment Minister, Rubén Ramírez, calculated 6,000 barrels (just over 950,000 liters). In an interview on Radioprogramas radio station on Wednesday, Repsol Peru spokeswoman Tine van den Wall Bake did not acknowledge the company's responsibility for the environmental disaster.

“It has been very strong, it has killed the ecosystem: the muymuys look like coffee,” says fisherman Einer Ames outside the La Pampilla refinery, alluding to the crustacean they use as bait. On Wednesday, after a meeting of Repsol executives with three ministers, two congressmen and leaders of fishermen's associations, the company offered to hire the seamen to clean up the oil. Although some victims do not agree, Ames -concerned about the day to day- hopes that the job will take place "with security measures". Although it is a toxic substance, "we have already seen people working without gloves," he warns.

On Friday, the radio station Radioprogramas reported that a company subcontracted by Repsol recruited some local fishermen and their relatives in the Ancón resort: the payment offered was 26 dollars for eight hours cleaning the crude oil in the sand. On Thursday night, Prime Minister Mirtha Vásquez spoke about the workers affected by the oil spill, among whom are the vendors and umbrella workers on the 21 affected beaches. The company "cannot hire them in activities that involve some risk or for which they are not prepared, that implies greater exposure," he warned in a statement after the first session of the crisis committee that the Government of Pedro Castillo has formed to face the disaster. environmental.

Vásquez stressed that the maritime authority has prohibited the vessel involved in the environmental disaster from setting sail, unless it pays a bail of 10 million dollars.

The General Directorate of Environmental Health of the Ministry of Health described 21 beaches as "unhealthy" on Wednesday in the districts of Ventanilla, Ancón and Santa Rosa, but that day the oil contamination had already advanced -heading north- towards the districts of Aucallama and Huaral in the Lima region.

Volunteers and victims

Cavero Beach is the epicenter of the work of state entities, Repsol contractors and volunteers who clean the sand and rescue marine fauna.

However, as of Thursday there were no offshore operations to prevent the contamination from spreading north.

A few kilometers away, on Bahía Blanca beach, 20 people wearing simple masks and disposable protective suits raked the sand.

After gathering it in a wheelbarrow, they deposited it on an extended plastic.

Most were young people who organized on Facebook.

Five workers from a Repsol contractor also swept the contaminated sand.

In Bahía Blanca, two of the affected fishermen, Pedro Asían and Roberto Quiroz, lamented the seriousness of the damage.

Five days after the spill, no representative of Repsol or public entities had been interested in these victims.

In a walk on the beach of Ventanilla, Congresswoman Ruth Luque asked them for the list of those affected who cannot return to the sea since midnight on Saturday.

“It cannot be that the company has 17 people on remediation tasks the first day and 150 people on a single shift the next day: it should be a permanent job.

There has to be a compensation to the imported sectors: fishermen, street vendors, and others”, said Luque in the contaminated area.

Oil removed from the sand at Playa Cavero, Ventanilla (Callao)Leslie Moreno

“This island is a fish farm and it will be impossible to return for a long time. Here next door, in Playa del Muerto, nobody is doing any cleaning work,” Quiroz showed from the top of a hill in Bahía Blanca, in front of the cabin where he keeps the nets with Asian. "No one has come here and the sea continues to drag the oil," explained the Asian fisherman, who saw the cleaning of the sand as insufficient, since every day it appears oiled again. “That island was full of ducks, wolves, otters, it woke up full of birds. Now it is to tell nothing more. We are in the air”, described Quiroz in the midst of the silence of the marine fauna.

In Playa Cavero, a group of young volunteers self-organized by WhatsApp helped independent veterinarians and state entities rescue seabirds for the second day. Sociology student Leslye Flores said that they received training from the wildlife authority (Serfor) to handle the species carefully, "place them in small cages covered with a towel" and hand them over to specialists. "Where the oil is today we have rescued three, but there were about 30 dead," said the young woman, who lives more than an hour from the place.

"I've seen absolute improvisation," said Kevin, another 22-year-old volunteer.

“Local and national governments are not prepared to face this type of disaster.

Yesterday we got to see all that improvisation,” he added.

Others affected, vendors and umbrella workers on the Costa Azul beach, the largest in Ventanilla, arrived at Playa Cavero on Thursday with signs asking for help, upon learning that the president would come to that point.

“We are 250 affected families who worked in the retail food business.

We are fathers, mothers and this happens in the middle of the summer season.

From Monday to Friday, 1,500 to 2,000 bathers came daily and up to 3,000 people came on the weekend,” said Clara Vega, 39 years old.

The Government's Response

Prime Minister Vásquez was at Playa Cavero with President Castillo for 30 minutes on Thursday. The president has insisted that Repsol must assume its responsibility and that the spill, in no case, will go unpunished. “We are facing one of the largest ecocides that have occurred on our coasts and sea. The Government assumes the role of punishing those responsible for the damage that tragically affects the flora, fauna and communities that are endangered and deprived of their daily livelihood,” Castillo tweeted.

Workers clean oil from Cavero beach in Ventanilla, Callao, Peru, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022, after high waves attributed to the eruption of an undersea volcano in Tonga caused an oil spill.

The Peruvian Civil Defense Institute said in a press release that a ship was loading oil into La Pampilla refinery on the Pacific coast on Sunday when strong waves moved the boat and caused the spill.

(AP Photo/Martin Mejia)Martin Mejia (AP)

At night, he announced that the Government would draw up a register of those affected.

And he was once again firm regarding the responsibility of the company.

"This State is not going to leave unpunished a damage as great as this and we are going to seek reparations and fair compensation," he announced.

"From the State, criminal, civil and administrative actions have been arranged in order to protect the sovereignty and well-being of the country," he added later.

The premier announced that the government is preparing regulations in response to what happened after the spill. "The institutional framework is still weak in environmental matters," he said. In 2015, in order to "reactivate the economy", the Government of Ollanta Humala approved new legislation known as the "environmental package" that reduced surveillance of companies for environmental crimes, while the Government of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski modified permissible limits of contamination so that private parties would have less possibility of being fined or sanctioned.

The head of the cabinet also announced that the Government has requested the help of a group of experts from the United Nations to provide technical assistance on the oil spill. The Foreign Ministry detailed this Friday that "the mission is made up of technicians specialized in rapid environmental response, coordination and management of incidents of this type, and planning and contingency for future similar occurrences." Additionally, the regional governor of Lima, Ricardo Chavarría, ordered the regional attorney to take legal action against the company that operates the refinery. The Office of the Attorney General of the Municipality of Chancay has criminally denounced Repsol del Perú officials for the alleged crime of environmental pollution. "The spill has irreparably affected the plankton and has advanced more than 200 kilometers,"assured the biologist Marino Morikawa in an interview in Radioprogramas.

Sernanp biologists attend to a rescued bird affected by the oil spill in Ancón on January 21. PILAR OLIVARES (REUTERS)

Since Monday, the Lima Northwest Specialized Environmental Prosecutor's Office has been in charge of investigations for the crime of environmental pollution.

On Thursday, the Public Ministry reported that it expanded the powers of that unit to carry out proceedings -beyond the metropolitan area- to the Lima Provinces region, "because the maritime contamination would have reached Supe (Barranca, 175 kilometers from Lima). ).

Said investigation will allow establishing the civil reparation in favor of the State that the Repsol Group of Peru SAC must pay”, he indicated.

Justice Minister Aníbal Torres tweeted on Wednesday that at Repsol there is “administrative (fine), civil (compensation) and criminal responsibility.

On the latter, the Prosecutor's Office must act ex officio," he considered.

Lima regional governor Ricardo Chavarría has ordered the regional prosecutor's office to take legal action against the company that operates the refinery.

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