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Brazil's
slow-motion environmental catastrophe unfolds
Toxic
mudslide from collapse of dams spreads as BHP Billington fined $66m
13
November, 2015
Nine
people are now confirmed dead, and a further 19 remain unaccounted
for as a slow-motion environmental catastrophe continues to unfold
following the collapse of two mining dams in Brazil’s mineral-rich
state of Minas Gerais.
Eight
days after the town of Bento Rodrigues was swept away by 50m cubic
metres of toxic mud, a slow-moving tide of toxic iron-ore residue is
oozing downriver, polluting the water supply of hundreds of thousands
of residents as it makes its way to the ocean.
Brazil’s
national water agency, ANA, has warned that the presence of arsenic,
zinc, copper and mercury now present in the Rio Doce make the water
untreatable for human consumption. Already the lack of oxygen and
high temperatures caused by the pollutants has killed off much of the
aquatic life along a 500km stretch of the river.
“It
is a tragedy of enormous proportions,” Marilene Ramos, president of
Ibama, the federal environmental agency, said. “We have thousands
of hectares of protected areas destroyed and the total extinction of
all the biodiversity along this stretch of the river.”
The
mine and dams are operated by Samarco Mineração SA, a joint venture
between the Anglo-Australian mining group BHP Billiton, the world’s
biggest mining company, and the Brazilian iron ore giant Vale. Shares
in BHP Billiton, a FTSE-100 company and therefore a key holding of
pension funds around the world – have been battered. Some £8bn has
been wiped off the value of the company as its shares in the UK and
Australia have slumped by an average of 14%.
For
the company – which operates around the world extracting and
marketing a range of products from oil, gas, coal and iron ore to
copper, silver and uranium – the dam burst comes as mining firms
are under pressure. Commodity prices are at a multi-year lows as a
result of slowing demand from China. BHP Billiton’s UK shares,
which closed at 883p last night, were changing hands at almost £20
only 16 months ago.
On
Thursday, Ibama announced a preliminary fine of 250m reals (US$66m)
for Samarco, but the final cost – the financial and reputational
damage – will be much, much higher.
Ramos
stressed that the fine did not include the cost of the clean-up
operation, lawsuits and compensation payments. The Brazilian
financial magazine Exame,
quoting an anonymous government source, said the total cost was
likely to run to between R$5bn-R$10bn (US$1.3bn-US$2.6bn).
There
will also be operational losses: the Minas Gerais mine produced more
than 5% of BHP Billiton’s iron ore output and about 3% of the
group’s earnings. Now Samarco has also been stripped of its mining
licence.
BHP
Billiton was formed in 2001, when Australia’s Broken Hill
Proprietary merged with South Africa’s Billiton. By Thursday the
firm, and its partner Vale, had sent senior management to see the
damage caused and promised an emergency fund expected to be around
$100m. But already there are allegations that there had been warnings
about the design of the dam and its safety.
Asked
whether she still had confidence in Brazilian mining regulations,
Ramos said she believed safety measures needed to be revised in the
wake of this disaster. “It cannot be right that in the last 12
years we have had five accidents in the state of Minas Gerais alone,”
she said.
Early
next week the mudslide is expected to reach the Atlantic, with a
potentially devastating impact on the fishing communities along the
coast of the state of Espírito Santo
.
.
On
a visit to the affected region on Thursday, President Dilma Rousseff
described the incident as “possibly the biggest environmental
disaster to have impacted one of the major regions of our country”.
She
compared the scale of the damage to the Deepwater Horizon disaster in
the Gulf of Mexico, and laid the blame squarely on Samarco.
“We
are committed in the first place to finding those who are
responsible,” Rousseff said. “Who is responsible? A private
business, Samarco – a big business that has Vale and BHP Billiton
as partners.”
Also
on Thursday, Brazil’s deputy attorney-general, Sandra Cureau,
argued that the companies should be subject to “exemplary
punishment” given their “negligence” over the accident.
“Vale
and BHP were totally careless in preventing this,” she said. “They
did not show a plan of action in case of disaster. They had no alarm
system in place.”
At
a press conference on Wednesday, the chief executives of BHP
Billiton, Andrew Mackenzie, and Vale, Murilo Ferreira, offered
apologies for the disaster and insisted they would honour their
obligations as joint owners.
However,
they offered no
comments to reports that Vale had diverted extra waterfrom
another mine to the tailings pond behind the dam in the weeks
preceding its collapse.
The
government itself has come under criticism for the sluggish nature of
its response. Critics point out it took Rousseff a whole week to
visit the region, while the conservative daily Folha
de São Paulo pointed
out that the state body responsible for monitoring the country’s
dams, the DNPM, checked each of them only once every four years.
Despite
the importance of mining to the Brazilian economy, the DNPM only has
220 inspectors charged with monitoring 27,293 sites nationwide. Last
year, three workers were killed at a dam near the area of last week’s
accident.
In
2012, thousands of residents of the town of Campo dos Goytacazes were
forced to flee their homes as water starting leaking through a dam.
Another breakage at a dam in the north-eastern state of Piauí in
2009 resulted in the deaths of 24 people.
Maurico
Guetta, a lawyer for the environmental NGO Instituto Socioambiental ,
described the close links between the government and the mining
industry in a blog post for the organisation: “Could it be that
this tragedy would bring any lessons for our governors and
legislators? Unfortunately, there seems to be no sign of that,” he
wrote.
Vale
was one of the major corporate donors to both Rousseff and the main
opposition candidate, Aécio Neves, in last year’s presidential
elections. Fernando Pimentel, the governor of the state of Minas
Gerais and another beneficiary of Vale campaign donations, held his
first press conference in the wake of the tragedy at the headquarters
of Samarco.
At
present congress is debating a law that would diminish environmental
regulation for “strategic infrastructure projects in the national
interest”, including mining.
Meanwhile,
in Governador Valadares , a town of 200,000 people some 330km from
the site of the original accident, the local authorities are bringing
in emergency water supplies for hospitals and schools from up to
100km away.
For other residents, the stockpiles of drinking water are running low. “The town’s three universities have closed and all the students have all gone home,” said Nagel Madeiros, from the city government. “Many people are leaving.”
The
original story
7 November - Nineteen people missing as mining executives suggest that an earth tremor could have triggered the disastrous collapse of two dams
Rescuers continue search for survivors after flooding from two collapsed dams used by mines owned by BHP Billiton and Vale swept through six villages
Photos
gallery: The astonishing situation of Brazil’s worst drought on
record
12
October,2015
Brazil’s
Amazonian rainforest has become a shadow of its former self as the
worst drought the country has seen in 100 years continues.
Low
levels of water in the Rio Negro have left boats
stranded and isolated homes sitting
in the middle of the large deserted landscape, reports Daily
Mail. Locals are surviving with as little as small pools of
water to live off of.
The
main water supply in São Paulo has been running
on emergency reserves,
and the system is only able to deliver about 40 percent of its usual
capacity. Before 2014, it was able to supply approximately 8,700
gallons of water per second, but now, it only delivers around 3,500
gallons per second.
Because
two-thirds of Brazil’s power comes from hydroelectric power
plants, electricity
has also been in short supply.
Widespread blackouts have hit the country’s largest cities, and
increased energy rationing is a possibility, which could stunt the
economy.
Navigation
of rivers in the region has been impeded and delivery
and shipments have become problematic.
As a direct result, companies such as state oil company Petrobras are
facing difficulties while trying to ship crude and natural gas,
reports the Latin American Herald Tribune.
Petrobas
has had to halt some of its tankers on the Rio Negro and the Solimões
rivers until they become navigable and the navy allows ships to sail
out to the oil fields.
The
drought has delivered a blow to both consumers and providers in
Manaus due to the dwindling supply of products. Because of the Amazon
tributaries’ low levels, shipping of merchandise from the duty-free
zone has to be done by air, whichincreases
the price consumers have to pay.
This combined with the Aleixo lake almost being dry has been causing
environmental damage and putting fishermen out of business.
Limited
access to water has also caused issues amongst neighbors as they
get into disputes during temporary shutoffs. Poorer areas of the
city have just as bad or even worse luck, considering they have even
less access.
“They
have two
hours of water on tap -
the women don’t sleep because the water comes in the early hours of
the morning, at around 4 a.m.,” said Martha Lu, a resident of São
Paulo. “They don’t have water storage, so they have to stay awake
because they don’t know when the water is coming again. They stay
up to collect it in buckets and try to do laundry, it’s terrible.”
João
Pereira de Araúj, Rio Branco, Brazil, 14 March 2015:
I
have seen many floods in my life, but never this high. My home is
built on stilts, but now the lower floor is submerged. I look out of
the window and see street after street under water – so many homes
and shops. All we can do is wait for the water to go down, clean up
and continue.
Gideon
Mendel’s Drowning World was shortlisted for this year’s Prix
Pictet global award in photography and sustainability. It will be at
the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris until 13 December, and on
billboards as part of Artists 4 Paris Climate 2015.
Photo
by Gideon Mendel.
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