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lATIN AmeRICA

Vale under fire for dam busts

aced with public outrage after its second had later sent revised data to Reuters and zato, a professor of constitutional law at the
Fmining dam collapse in four years killed other news outlets.” Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said.
at least 240 people in Brazil, Vale SA mis- Vale said its statements surrounding the Vale operates several different kinds of
represented what it had done to shut down dams had been made in good faith, and dams in Brazil to store the muddy detritus
its riskiest dams, a review of the company’s added that it had done a lot to prevent a re- of its mining activity known as “tailings”. The
statements shows. currence of the Mariana disaster and that two that collapsed used an upstream tech-
Fabio Schvartsman, Vale’s then-chief ex- much “is still being done”. nique in which the dam is gradually built
ecutive, said at a nationally broadcast news The latest development adds to the min- upon a reservoir of sludge.
conference days after the dam burst in late ing giant’s legal troubles. Brazilian prosecu- Such dams are generally cheaper to
January that the company had already de- tors have said they are looking into whether build, but they run a higher risk of water
commissioned nine “upstream dams” in the senior Vale executives were aware of sta- seeping under the dam and weakening the
wake of a 2015 disaster involving the same bility issues at Brumadinho and other dams structure, mining experts told Reuters.
type of structure, and planned to dismantle but failed to disclose them or take adequate Chile and Peru have long banned the
10 more over the next few years. The com- actions to resolve them. construction of such dams, because of the
pany repeated the claim in a statement on Brazilian market regulator CVM has also risks of collapse. In February, Brazil’s ANM
its website. opened at least two different administrative banned new upstream tailings dams and
Reuters asked Vale for details on these probes into Vale’s handling of the disaster, told miners they had to decommission ex-
moves on February 5, seven days after Sch- while the company faces US class actions isting ones by August 15, 2023, a deadline
vartsman’s news conference. and at least one investor arbitration case in it recently pushed back by as many as four
In March, some five weeks later, Vale Brazil. years.
gave Reuters a list of nine dams that it said Mining watchdog ANM is carrying out a Vale, the world’s largest iron ore exporter,
it had closed since 2014, a year before the separate investigation into the causes of the is not the only big miner that operates up-
Mariana disaster. Five were smaller struc- dam burst as well as whether any mining or stream dams. At BHP, for example, 43%
tures, called dikes, which Vale said should other administrative rules were broken. of its 67 operated dams are upstream, al-
be considered “upstream dams,” while four “In my view, it’s clear that the CEO of any though only five of those are active, accord-
others were listed as single-step dams, company, public or private, will certainly be ing to a slide presentation on its website
which experts consider less dangerous. held accountable by shareholders and the from June, with the sole active ones among
But Eduardo Leão, a director of the Bra- authorities for any kind of statement, espe- those based in Chile and Australia. BHP
zilian mining regulator ANM, and another cially if it is proven to be untrue,” Luigi Boniz- verified that the numbers were accurate.
expert who reviewed the list for Schvartsman was removed as
Reuters, said that they were all in chief executive in early March at
fact smaller structures and not the the urging of prosecutors who said
dangerous upstream type. in a letter to the board that his and
Vale also listed the 10 dams that other top Vale executives’ con-
it said it planned to close, including tinued presence at the company
the collapsed one at Brumadinho. posed “immeasurable risks to so-
Brazilian prosecutors now are ciety.”
looking into Schvartsman’s declara- In May, the company told in-
tion that Vale had already shuttered vestors that it expected to spend
nine upstream dams in response to $US1.855 billion to shutter the 10
the 2015 collapse as part of a wider upstream dams it planned to close.
criminal probe into the company’s For now, the company’s dams
conduct, an individual close to the continue to pose risks. In May,
investigation said. one of the upstream dams slated
The 2015 collapse, at its Samar- to be decommissioned, called Sul
co JV with BHP Ltd, killed 19 peo- Superior, came close to breaking,
ple near the town of Mariana. Brazilian regulators and Vale said,
“There was a lot of talk about threatening to force the evacuation
measures being taken to avoid a of 10,000 people from three his-
repetition of what happened, but toric towns.
it was nothing more than talk,” the Vale said the dam at that mine,
source added. known as Gongo Soco, was being
Schvartsman’s representatives monitored in real time by systems
at the law firm of Bottini & Tama- capable of detecting millimetric
sauskas declined to comment. movements, as well as by drones.
In a statement, Vale said the It added that the company in May
original figures that Schvartsman started building a concrete con-
provided were based on “informa- tainment wall 6km downstream
tion available at the time, provided from the dam that would be able to
by employees from the company’s hold back a large portion of the tail-
ferrous metals area at the time of ings if the dam collapsed.
the [news conference] and that it
– Reuters

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