Vale has identified surface cracks in the Forquilha III dam at the Fábrica mine in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, as reported by the company itself. In a statement, it states that the stability conditions of the structure remain unchanged.
After identifying the cracks, Vale said it is conducting additional checks on the dam, keeping the relevant public bodies informed and executing an action plan for investigation and corrections, as necessary.
“Vale maintains its commitments to advance in the decharacterization of the structure and to seek to reduce its emergency level,” it said in a statement.
The Forquilha III dam is at emergency level 3 and is permanently monitored. It has a Downstream Containment Structure and its Self-Rescue Zone has been evacuated, without the presence of communities.
Tragedy
In 2024, it will be five years since the collapse of the Vale dam in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais. In the tragedy – in January 2019 – 272 people lost their lives, including two babies born to pregnant women. The collapse of the structure released an avalanche of waste, which also caused major impacts in several municipalities in the Paraopeba River basin.
After the disaster, the Mar de Lama Nunca Mais (Mud Sea Never Again) Law was enacted in 2019. The law prohibits new upstream dams and determines that those that are still active must be decommissioned. Forquilha III is undergoing this process.
Upstream dams are those whose dam body is built using tailings through successive heightening of the deposited tailings. This was the method used in the dams that collapsed in Mariana and Brumadinho.
