President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Thursday (5) that a new agreement to repair the damage caused by the collapse of the Samarco mining dam in Mariana (MG), which occurred in 2015, will finally be signed in October. The company responsible for the disaster that killed 19 people and caused irreparable environmental impacts in the Rio Doce Basin, between Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo, is controlled by the Brazilian Vale and the British BHP Billiton.
“This has been going on for ten years, with several commitments, several attempts to reach an agreement, several court decisions, and Vale has not complied. Now it will have to comply. In fact, Vale is changing its management. I hope that the new management of Vale will be more careful and will think more about Vale’s development, because the current management only wants to sell assets, not about conducting new research or obtaining new minerals. So, I think things will change for the better. By the beginning of October, we will have an agreement with Vale to resolve the problem in Mariana, and we want to use the funds to recover what was damaged and take care of the people,” said Lula in an interview with Rádio Vitoriosa, in Uberlândia, in the Triângulo Mineiro region, where he was attending an afternoon event to inaugurate a block of the city’s Hospital das Clínicas.
More than eight years after the tragedy, considered the biggest environmental disaster caused by the mining sector in Brazil, the mining companies and the authorities have not reached an agreement on how to repair the damage caused.
Negotiations
On November 5, 2015, the collapse of a dam owned by the mining company Samarco, located in the rural area of Mariana (MG), released 39 million cubic meters of mining waste into the environment. Nineteen people died. The mud devastated communities and left a trail of environmental destruction along the Rio Doce Basin, reaching its mouth in Espírito Santo.
To repair the damage caused by the tragedy, a Transaction and Conduct Adjustment Agreement (TTAC) was signed in 2016 between the federal government, the governments of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo, Samarco and shareholders Vale and BHP Billiton. Based on this agreement, the Renova Foundation was created, an entity responsible for managing more than 40 programs. All planned measures were to be funded by the three mining companies.
The goal of the current renegotiation is to seal a new agreement that will resolve more than 80,000 backlogged lawsuits. The lawsuits raise questions about the lack of autonomy of the Renova Foundation, delays in rebuilding destroyed communities, compensation amounts, and the failure to recognize a portion of those affected, among other issues.
In early May, the Union and the Holy Spirit rejected a new proposal of R$90 billion for full compensation for the damage caused by the Mariana tragedy. The amount would encompass both material damages and collective moral damages and was considered insufficient by the authorities. The government’s proposal revolves around compensations totaling R$ 109 billion.
Movement is against
Last month, the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) released an open letter to President Lula in which requests the rejection of the proposal of the mining companies Vale and BHP Billiton, presented at the Rio Doce Renegotiation Table.
In the document, the movement demands “a coherent agreement that considers the centrality of the victims and their full reparation, not the speculative and short-term interests of those who have remained unpunished for their crimes for years.” The organization forwarded the document to the federal government and also requested an audience with President Lula.
According to MAB, the companies are seeking an agreement estimated at approximately R$100 billion, but the amount, according to the entity, is not enough to guarantee full compensation for all affected families. “They intend to pass on to the federal government the obligation to resolve the unresolved problems,” the document states. For the movement, if compared to the agreement reached by Vale in Brumadinho, in the other dam collapse of the mining company, in 2019, the value of the Mariana agreement should be at least R$500 billion. “Abroad, those affected are suing BHP seeking compensation and the bill will certainly be much higher,” the letter highlights.
