For over a decade, Judid Angamarca lived in a wooden shack on stilts next to an old waste pit, where for years oil sludge from drilling was dumped.

The patch of land, the size of a tennis court, was cleaned and covered with earth in 1996. But it stubbornly refused to produce anything she tried to grow. Her three children played in the grass as babies; her animals roamed around, too. The residents living in and around San Carlos have long lived among the wells, pipes, and waste pits laid down for the oil bonanza in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

But two years ago, from a six-inch hole, oil waste emerged -- and so did Ms. Angamarca's doubts about her dead pigs and chickens and her children's rashes and coughs. The government relocated her family to a new home recently.

"You get mad, you want to leave [the area], but you have nowhere to go," says Angamarca.

San Carlos sits in the middle of more than 100 wells drilled in the Sacha field by Texaco, which pumped oil as the sole operator of a consortium here from 1972 until 1990. At the time, it was one of the highest concentrations of wells in the Amazonian region, and today this remote town finds itself in the middle of what could be the largest damage claim against the oil industry in its history.

The landmark lawsuit, which began in 1993 in New York and is now in an Ecuadorean court in this jungle region, alleges that Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, knowingly unleashed toxins across an estimated 1,700 square miles - roughly the size of Rhode Island.

This allegedly occurred in one of the most biodiverse forests on the planet. Plaintiffs' lawyers say Texaco's dumping represents 30 times more than the crude spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska. According to a report by a court-appointed expert, Chevron could face $27 billion in damages to soil, groundwater, and drinking water - and even for cancer-related deaths. The decision is expected any day.