It is honestly insane how blatant some companies are here about polluting. The pollution case that I have been working on for the last two months witnessed a serious new development last week.
The companies who we know have already been dumping chemical water into the canals of these nearby villages, decided to take their egregious polluting one step further.
They came to the village at night and dumped chemicals directly into the village pond that feeds right into the village well, as a result thousands of fish died.
A villager who had helped us before, called to tell us about the incident last Wednesday, and I rushed out to the dump site to take pictures of all the dead fish for our lawyer. They lined one entire side of the pond. Most of the villagers had not noticed and were going about their day as usual washing their clothes, themselves, and their dishes in the polluted water.
I went out of town for the weekend with my Mom and Aunt who were visiting. I got a call on Friday to let me know that the company had come back and dumped more chemicals killing ever more fish. The villagers were irate and worked all morning to remove the dead fish. Apparently a number of news reporters came to cover the story, but only two newspapers ended up running anything about the story. The rest of the newspapers were intimidated by the companies. Even the two stories that ran did not do justice what really had happened.
I went back to the village today to take so more interviews and the saddest part is a number of the villagers I talked to thought the water they were using to bath, drink, and wash with was clean. They thought that by taking the dead fish out they had magically cleaned up their water.
This new turn of events makes the petition I am helping file more important then ever, and I am going to meet with the lawyer tomorrow to give him all the photos and interviews I have taken so he has everything he will need to file his application on thursday.
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