Rio's Oil Spill Impact Severe

Associated Press

Last Updated: Feb. 3, 2000 at 0:30:11 a.m.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The environmental devastation from thousands of tons of oil that spilled from a pipeline into Guanabara Bay was immediate. Black muck spread through protected mangrove swamps, covering birds, crabs and fish.

The social damage was slower to surface.

``In total, close to 10,000 fishermen and their families have been deprived of their way of living, and at least 2,000 are in desperate conditions. Nobody can go fishing any more,'' said Gilson Carlos de Matos, spokesman for the Guanabara Bay fishermen.

Rosemary Paulino Cavalcante had plans to finish the roof and paint the brick walls of her two-room shack with the money her husband earned fishing. Now, she simply wonders how she will feed her family and buy clothes for her children, age 7 and 10. ``We can't even imagine what we are going to do if there is no fish to catch,'' Cavalcante said.

The spill occurred around midnight of January 18 at Reduc, one of Brazil's biggest oil refineries. Crude spewed from a broken pipeline at the bottom of Guanabara Bay, and five hours went by before it was stopped.

The government oil conglomerate Petrobras has estimated 8,200 barrels were released, but the Union of Oil Workers claimed it was three times as much: 1 million gallons, or 24,600 barrels.

Regardless of the amount, environmentalists say it will take at least 10 years to fully restore sea life within the 16 square miles affected by the spill.

Once renowned as an inspiration for poets, Guanabara Bay now receives 400 tons of waste daily. Its beaches aren't suitable for swimming, and some are little more than mosquito-infested marshes. The oil that will seep into the seabed ``may kill the plankton, breaking the food chain, compounding a situation which already was like that of a sick man in the intensive care unit,'' said Marcelo Furtado, a Sao Paulo-based director of Greenpeace.

Petrobras was punished with a record fine of $28.6 million, although a loophole reduced that amount by 30 percent. Petrobras said the discount will go to a fund to help clean the bay, but victims said it is hardly enough.

Attorneys for the fishermen have filed a suit against Petrobras demanding $67 million in compensation for ruined nets, oil-soaked boats and a loss of earnings over four years. This is ``the minimum time for us to return to fishing,'' said de Matos, the fishermen's spokesmen.

On Monday, 100 fishermen staged a protest on the bay. One carried a sign saying: ``It's not only the environment. It's people.''

Most of them were like Cavalcante's husband, Jorge Edmar da Silva. For ten years he made his living from the bay, leaving home before dawn to fish and selling his catch on the beach for 73 cents a pound. It was enough to support his family and build a hut by the sea in Gradim, one of Rio's hundreds of slums. Over the years he bought a TV set and a refrigerator.

A few yards away, the beach is dark, stinking mud, covered with garbage, flies and at least a dozen cats. Rio's gleaming skyline is barely visible, just 12 miles off but a world away. Cavalcante and other families have received donations of food from Petrobras, but the handouts weren't well received. Some fishermen complained the company was treating them like beggars, while others noted that the food wasn't enough.

Cavalcante said the food basket she received with rice, black beans and a liter of cooking oil - meant to last two weeks - was gone in three days.

``There are other needs,'' she said. ``We have nothing for medicine, we don't have any soap to wash.'' The plans to fix the house were put off indefinitely.

``It will have to wait who knows for how long,'' she said. ``We can't plan anymore.''

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-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 03, 2000