Russell testified that he mostly sat alone in an empty ballroom of the Hotel Lago with notes and visual records of his so-called "toxic tour" and a copy of a book he wrote to perform calculations. He said that Donziger stopped in to check in on him a couple of times but never interfered with his work.
While Judge Kaplan characterized Russell's visual inspections as "eyeballing it," the scientist said that he could make rough determinations based on the color, viscosity and appearance of the pits. He recalled stepping on one covered with leaves and vegetation and hearing a "squishy" sound, "like stepping on the soft surface of a sponge, only a very big sponge," and taken down rough measurements of its size.
On the second day of his testimony Thursday, Russell stood by the remarks he made in a 2003 interview with the Wall Street Journal that the hundreds of oil pits spotting the Amazon had a scale "larger than the Chernobyl disaster."
He added that he had been referring to the landmass of the affected area rather than the gravity of the pollution. There were between 600 and 700 open oil pits in the Oriente region of the rainforest, and the number could be as high as 900, Russell estimated. He told the paper that decontamination would dwarf any other project ever taken, adding on the witness stand that the remark may no longer be true after the Fukushima disaster.
Without repudiating those comments, Russell added that he was uncomfortable with how Donziger's publicists used them to trumpet reports of the "Amazon's Chernobyl." The scientist said that he eventually told Donziger to "drop it" because radioactivity and oil contamination were not a proper comparison, and he grew frustrated that Donziger would not fund soil and water testing needed to turn his "guesstimate" to an "estimate." He told the lawyer, "A cost estimate is not a trivial matter," in an email dated Dec. 12, 2004.
In addition to worrying about his professional reputation, Russell said that he grew angry that Donziger did not pay him more than $113,000 that he was owed. He quit two years into the job, sued Donziger, and collected a settlement. Their relationship became "poor, bordering on hostile" in 2005, he said.
That year, he started sending emails to his former adversary, Chevron scientist Sara McMillen. One message from that November informed her of a report by the Alexis Group, with whom he arranged to provide soil samples. He told McMillen that "the data appear authentic," and the report discussed a cheaper method of oil remediation. He explained in court that the method he recommended in his original estimate for Donziger involved digging up, transporting and incinerating petroleum, whereas the new study recommended a cheaper "bio-remediation" technique involving the addition of enzymes and bacteria to neutralize and attack the pollution. He offered in that email to provide a "revised cost estimate" for Chevron.
The next year, Russell began sending "cease-and-desist" letters to Donziger and Amazon Watch, a nonprofit that Chevron calls a co-conspirator, to stop using his $6 billion estimate. He said that Donziger ignored two of his letters and continued citing the figure in press releases for months.
More tips to his former adversary at Chevron followed. Russell said he wrote in an August 2006 email to McMillen relating information about a Polish study that he believed could be helpful to Chevron. He wrote "this falls into the category of CYA," which he called a "term of art" for "cover your ass."
Judge Kaplan interjected, "Which is a high art form in our society," to laughter in the court.
Reed Brodsky, a Chevron lawyer known as a former prosecutor for the largest insider-trading scheme in U.S. history, highlighted far less friendly emails between Russell and Donziger during redirect. In one Oct. 12, 2004, email that Russell had titled "misquoting me is not a good idea," the scientist chastised Donziger for allegedly misrepresenting him as accusing Chevron of acting with "evil intent" in sending samples to a U.S. laboratory.
A Nov. 4, 2004, message informed Donziger that the compounds BTEX, a form of benzene, and GRO, a type of gasoline were found.
Russell wrote that these chemicals were "more indicative of Petroecuador," a state-run company that Chevron blames for the pollution. This is because the elements do not tend to last long in the Amazon's tropical climate, and Texaco left the area in 1990, the scientist testified.
Donziger's team contends that Texaco provided the infrastructure that Petroecuador uses, and thus deserves a share of its liabilities.
Kaplan appeared intrigued about the issue and asked several questions to Russell about the compounds after both parties finished their examinations, perhaps signaling that the issue is likely to arise again in the trial, which is expected to last three or more weeks. The court then recessed for lunch before reconvening for testimony by McMillen, Russell's former adversary turned correspondent.
Lawyers for Donziger and the rainforest residents have objected to the courtroom protocol of taking direct examination testimony from witnesses by deposition. The lawyers must later lodge objections to the portions they think the court should strike as inadmissible. Though Judge Kaplan refused to change this procedure, he added earlier this week that the first of such depositions included arguments that did not comply with the rules of evidence.
In her colorful, 37-page deposition, McMillen briefly recounts her professional relationship with Russell but mostly takes aim at a report from the scientific expert appointed by the Lago Agrio court. Chevron says this expert, Richard Cabrera, was supposed to be independent but filled his report with passages ghostwritten by Stratus Consultants, a Colorado-based firm that filled Russell's shoes years later.
Like Russell, Stratus executives also have turned against Donziger to testify for Chevron. They are expected to take the stand in the coming weeks, at which time more details of the science investigating the state of the Amazon may come to light.
Chevron had McMillen investigate Stratus, and she describes her findings in the deposition.
"I almost fell out of my chair," McMillen said. "Stratus not only drafted the Cabrera report, but 'cleaned and sanitized' the document in an attempt to hide its involvement."
So far, only the draft depositions have been made publicly available, and it is unclear which of the statements by Chevron witnesses will remain in the record.
Meanwhile, Donziger's lawyers have long argued that the Cabrera report is a red herring because the judgment against Chevron states that the Ecuadorean judge did not consider it.
Witness testimony continues on Monday with Robert Leonard, a professor of linguistics. He is expected to analyze the Cabrera report's relation to the Ecuadorean judgment.
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