Two weeks, eight dead and 44 thousand people contaminated after the outbreak of the scandal.  Investigation of the toxic waste that has been poisoning Abidjan, Ivory Coast, seems to be yielding results. Authorities have arrested two French citizens employed by the Dutch company Trafigura Beheer BV, the “owner” of 400 tons of toxic waste dumped by the Probo Koala oil company in 14 sites spread throughout the city on August 19, 2006.

Emergency. An Italian woman, resident in Abidjan for six years, told PeaceReporter recently, “The emergency continues, and now we have hysteria on top of all of the other problems. Last Friday people blocked the streets and lynched the Transportation Minister because there was a rumor of another dumping of toxic substances.” The people’s anger was also directed at the Harbor Master of Abidjan, whose house  was torched. While both government and opposition newspapers have manipulated the crisis story, people have come to blows over these daily revelations. Our source continues: “We don’t know whom we can trust. Bulletins on television reassure us that the water is potable and that the toxic substances are not radioactive. But in the meantime people are dying after eating fish from the lagoon, and there are thousands of families who live off the animals that are raised and the vegetables grown near places where the waste has been dumped.  How can we guarantee their health? It’s too late to go around wearing those little face masks that everybody has put on.”

Mysteries. Given the silence of the authorities, contradictory statements continue to circulate about the substances dumped into the lagoon. In the early days of the crisis people were talking about emissions of sulfuric acid, but Trafigura, in a press release to PeaceReporter, says that they had a sample of the waste analyzed  by AVR Industrial Waste BV, who excluded the presence of any acid.  The analysis did confirm the presence of caustic soda and residues of petroleum, understandable because Probo Koala was transporting naphtha. Alessandro Rabbiosi of Terre des Hommes stated in a phone conversation that “The problem is that it is not enough to just heal those people who have been contaminated. Who ever receives assistance returns home to an environment that is still unhealthy. You have to wait for cleanup of the sites. People have such fear that in the last few days they have been blocking even the regular garbage trucks. And so, in addition to the toxic emergency, now there is the added problem of garbage piling up.  Then there are a lot of people with longstanding, chronic conditions who show up at the hospital to take advantage of the free medical care so that they can be treated without paying.”

Investigations. The authorities have detained eight people, including two employees of Trafigura. The company says that it is “shocked,” by the arrest of the two French citizens who were stopped just a few hours before they were to board a flight for Paris. New details of the affair have come out recently. Trafigura apparently chose Abidjan as the port for unloading their waste for reasons of cost.  Because of its highly toxic content, the material to be unloaded would not have been allowed by the Amsterdam Port Service, the agency charged with overseeing waste disposal in Dutch ports, without payment of a high administrative fee.  So Trafigura decided to pump the liquids into the ship—an illegal procedure—and then empty it in Abidjan about a month later, as the ship made a was on its way to Lagos, Nigeria.  
The whole episode has brought severe objections from environmental groups, but there is even more to the story. According to our source, who for reasons of safety wishes to remain anonymous, “Tommy, the Ivory Coast agency responsible for refuse disposal in the port of Abidjan, does not have authority to handle toxic substances.” Trafigura insists that it informed the authorities of the materials in the waste. All of this buck passing runs the threatens to hold up the investigation and delay establishing exactly who is responsible for the greatest ecological scandal in the history of the Ivory Coast.