A year ago, a Brazilian dam operated by Vale gave way to a tsunami of 9.7 million cubic meters of mining sludge, killing 270 people. The surrounding community will never be rebuilt.
Exactly one year ago Saturday, a Brazilian dam operated by iron ore miner Vale gave way to a tsunami of 9.7 million cubic meters of mining sludge that buried part of a town and killed 270 people.
Though the surrounding community will never be rebuilt, Vale is on the hook for at least cleaning up the sludge laced with iron ore residue and mining waste so that it doesn’t further pollute Brumadinho water supplies. It is laborious work that requires draining the water from the mud, packing the dirt down into bricks, piling them up in the countryside and covering them up with replanted vegetation.
“We haven’t stopped for a single day, not even on Christmas, and we don’t plan to,” Lt. Douglas Constantino says. “Those families need closure.” The 68-year-old retired bricklayer looked toward a bed and breakfast at which two cousins and two nephews worked, but he could no longer see it. A neighbor’s house, some 20 meters away from his own, was also destroyed.
Goncalves can point out four or five houses on his street in the Corrego do Feijao neighborhood that now stand empty. He said he plans to stay put and has used the money to buy a car. “This used to be the best place ever,” he recalled. Schvartsman took over in 2017, a little less than two years after the Mariana tailings dam collapsed in a separate incident, killing 19. “He entered the role with the slogan ‘Mariana Never Again,’ but it was a false slogan,” William Coelho, a state prosecutor, told reporters in Minas Gerais.
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