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Nearly a year after the worst ecological disaster in Brazil’s history unleashed a toxic mudslide of mining waste that could fill at least 20,000 Olympic swimming pools into the the southeastern Doce River, a top mining executive Thursday resigned over the company’s handling of the spill.
OPINION:
Brazil’s ‘Mountain Tsunami’: a Disaster Waiting to Happen
Communities downstream from the Samarco iron ore mine in the state of Minas Gerais, where a tailings pond dam ruptured last November, were forced to stop fishing in the river, that is stained by the color of copper. Moreover, communities still don’t have a clear answer on whether eating fish from the river poses health risks to the public, Brazil’s O Globo reported Wednesday.
Authorities banned fishing at the mouth of the river earlier this year as a result of pollution concerns. But even in other areas of the river where fishing is still allowed, local people fear the worst, and interest in fishermen’s haul from outside their communities quickly dried up.
The toxin-laced mudslide that burst out of the Samarco mine on Nov. 5, 2015, flattened the nearby community of Bento Rodrigues, killing 19 people, and polluted hundreds of miles of the river before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. Brazilian prosecutors recently filed homicide charges against 21 people linked to the disaster, and the companies behind the project also face charges for several environmental crimes.
Affected communities and environmental activists have slammed authorities' slow response to clean up the damage and start to remediate the area. Critics have also argued that Samarco — a multinational joint venture between Brazil’s Vale SA and Melbourne-based BHP Billiton — hasn’t paid the price for its crime of ecocide.
Under the banner “We are all affected,” Brazil’s Movement of Dam-Affected People, known by its Portuguese acronym MAB, has been ramping up a campaign to raise awareness about the ongoing impacts of the dam breach ahead of the one-year anniversary.
“We have to repair the rights of those affected,” Leticia Oliveira, a member of MAB’s national leadership, said in a press conference Wednesday, according to Brasil de Fato, criticizing the exclusion of local communities from negotiations and agreements struck in response to the crisis. “We cannot fail to highlight the role of the state, which is colluding with the company.”
Contamination of the river has also had deep cultural impacts on Indigenous communities that have depended on the water source for generations and see it as sacred.
“A year after the crimes we do not know what to do, our people are hungry in spirit,” said Geovani Krenak, leader of the Krenak people whose ancestral lands span the Doce River basin, according to Brasil de Fato. “Throughout our history, our people always took refuge in the river, even during the military dictatorship.”
“We never accepted this company here and we have always been as an obstacle that delayed progress,” he continued. “But what ‘progress’ do we have now?”
Meanwhile, BHP Billiton’s chief commercial officer, Dean Dalla Valle, charged earlier this year with spearheading the corporation’s response to the mining disaster, resigned Thursday after working with the company for about 40 years. The mining giant’s chairman, Jac Nasser, has signaled that he plans to step down next year as well
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Brazil Police Accuse Samarco of Paving Way for Dam Disaster
Brazilian investigators established that negligence and human error sparked the catastrophe at Samarco. Independent reports showed that experts had warned Samarco about dam safety at least two years prior to the disaster. After the breach, the mine was forced to close the mine, and it remains unclear whether it will reopen, despite attempts by the parent companies to get the operation back on its feet. Executives have claimed it may be feasible to restart mining activity mid-2017, but also that the future of the mine would likely depend on using waste-management infrastructure at neighboring Vale operations.
Earlier this year, Vale and BHP Billiton — which both have a 50 percent share in Samarco — agreed to pay 24 billion Brazilian reais, or about US$7.6 billion at the current exchange rate, over several years. A civil lawsuit for 155 billion reais, or about US$49 billion today, against the companies, the Brazilian government, and two state governments remains pending.
The Movement of Dam-Affected People has planned a six-day mobilization coinciding with the Samarco dam rupture anniversary from Oct. 31 to Nov. 5. A march will depart from the coastal village of Regencia in Espirito Santo state and travel the path of the contamination of the Doce river to the city of Mariana, near the epicenter of the crisis in Minas Gerais state, where events will bring together affected communities, human rights defenders and experts to discuss underlying causes of the disaster and ongoing challenges.
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