Notícias brumadinho: The black box of the inspection of dams, the secret of audits contracted by minors | Brazil

A little over three years separate the two most important environmental catastrophes in Brazil. In 2015, the rupture of a dam in Mariana left 19 people dead, swallowed a river and left environmental impacts so severe that they are still felt in the surrounding municipalities. Just 90 kilometers away, the break-up of another mining dam in Brumadinho caused a new ocean of mud that claimed the lives of at least 121 people, 226 of whom were still missing Saturday night. During the last decade, some control instruments have been improved in Brazilian legislation to prevent this type of disaster, but they continue to present a series of false alarms, ranging from the lack of transparency of periodic project monitoring to lack of preparation. servers. public bodies and even the lack of staff to provide surveillance.

Continuous monitoring is a key element of the equation. According to engineers heard by EL PAÍS, mining dams such as Mariana and Brumadinho, which store the separate residues of metals traded in mines, are structures that must be monitored at all stages (construction, operation and dismantling) as they can destabilize and separate, mostly because of mismanagement of water control.

Although these dams have existed in Brazil for decades, a national law aimed at unifying inspection and implementing policy has only been created for nine years. National security of dams. With this law, the inspection of mining dams, previously carried out by environmental agencies, is now concentrated in the National Mine Agency (ANM). Today, 205 mining dams (including 50 Vale) are inspected by the ANM. Federal autarky must badyze – in accordance with the orders and resolutions created after the 2010 law – a series of surveillance documents (including technical reports, dam videos and stability statements) sent by the miners themselves. . It should also carry out inspections in loco in the most affected areas, but only 35 inspectors have been trained to work on tailings dams.

Mining companies control their own dams

The risk of dam failure is measured by taking into account the technical characteristics and characteristics of dams. the conversation. This information must be provided by the owner companies (in the case of Brumadinho, Vale) to the control body, as well as emergency action plans and periodic monitoring and conservation reports. established by outsourced contractors of the mining company. The company Pimenta de Ávila is developing this inspection and audit work for the mining companies. She worked in the Mariana Dam three years before the disruption and since then has not been hired by Vale or companies under her control. The engineer Joaquim Pimenta, director of the consulting firm, explains that there are different instruments for measuring the stability of mining dams and that the audit procedure is different depending on the specificities of each dam. According to him, it is not easy to synthesize the possible causes of dam disruption. In this work, the company studies the mining project, badesses safety, issues a report and a report confirming whether the structure is stabilized or not.

mining, because the variables are very different from one dam to the other, even if they are of the same type. However, most cases of disturbance are due to water control problems. "The water destroys a dam and now the controls are done very specifically for each dam," he said. Hidelbrando Neto, Undersecretary for the Regulatory of the Environment of Minas Gerais, said Friday in the same direction: "The two disasters (Mariana and Brumadinho) that occurred occurred with dams upstream and, at least, everything indicates that the information we receive here, it is that it is by liquefaction, "he told Reuters.

Pimenta was a key witness in the case of Mariana, but he avoids making comparisons between the breaks of the two dams, which he says have many specificities. and divergent ages. The Mariana's was built in 2010 and erupted in 2015. The Brumadinho date dates back to the 1970s. Meanwhile, Vale announced that it had carried out inspections every two weeks on the dam that had burst in Brumadinho and that had been reported to the ANM. The last inspection was sent to the local authorities on December 21st. Two others took place in January, days 8 and 22, but they were not reported and were recorded only in the mining system. The MNA does not specify whether there is a particular delay between the inspection and the delivery of the award to the local authority, but indicates that it has received all the required documents from Vale. According to the miner, none of the inspections carried out detected change in the state of conservation of the structure and the dam that was broken was controlled by 94 piezometers and 41 water level indicators .

Reports prepared by these audit firms are returned to the company. owner (in the case of Brumadinho, in Vale), who must regularly send these reports and statements of stability to the inspection of the National Mining Agency. "What's happening in the mining industry is that they've given the key to fox henchmen." The government must oversee and audit the mining companies, which necessarily requires investment in the environment. environment to qualify the teams of responsible bodies, "says the ecologist Ricardo Motta Pinto Coelho, professor of geography at the Federal University of São João del Rei (UFSJ), in an interview with EL PAÍS He followed the evolution of the Mariana tragedy for two years and concluded that impunity was playing in favor of mining companies involved in social and environmental crimes.

In the case of Brumadinho, the company maintains that there was no sign of risk of dam failure, an argument which was not considered credible by the courts, which ordered the pre-trial detention of at least five people in part of the control process (the arrest took place on Sunday at the behest of the mining court.) Among those arrested on a pre-trial basis are employees of Vale and the German company Tüv Süd, who inspected the dam and performs the ty The Wall Street Journal revealed that employees of Tüv Süd Brasil also acted as consultants to Vale, which would create a conflict of interest.

Inspections without public transparency and lack of preparation

The issue of lack of transparency also calls attention to the issue of transparency. Despite the serious consequences of a dam failure, the monitoring documents produced by subcontracted contractors of mining companies can not be accessed by the public even in the absence of investigation procedure. ANM, which concentrates this documentation, informs that it has received Vale's material on time, but that "the documents of the extraction process are confidential, in accordance with the law on industrial property". The COUNTRY has not identified in this law the pbadage that deals with this specific secret and the municipality has not explained why the need for secrecy for dams not being object of. investigation.

A simplified version of the monitoring reports is sent to the Minas Gerais Environment Secretariat. The report attempted to access this document, but the agency's opinion, which requested the formalization of the request by email, did not respond to the request. Vale itself guarantees the possession of all the documents, but claims not to disseminate this content – which the company claims to have made available to the authorities – because it gave priority to victim support work.

The National Information System on Dam Safety was. created in the 2010 law in order to collect, store, process, manage and make available to the society information relating to the safety of dams throughout the national territory. Even in this case, very little information is public. An annual report on the safety of dams of different types is available to the company, summarized by the National Water Agency (ANA). The last of them was made available in 2017, with information from 2016. The Dano Potencial Associado Alto dams (due to loss of life and high economic, social and environmental impacts), such as that of Brumadinho, should elaborate

It is a plan which should contain the potential emergency situations of the dam, define the actions to be carried out in these cases and define the agents to be notified, in order to minimize damage and loss of life. It must also have simple language and be accessible both in the business and in the town hall and the civil defense of the state and municipality where the dam is located. Folha de S. Paulo had access to this document, which states that Vale knew that a possible rupture of the dam I Feijão mine would flood the cafeteria and the administrative unit of the Company, where there were hundreds of employees.

The other trick, of public power, also presents vulnerabilities. The Mayor of Brumadinho, Neném da Asa (PV), said that the Civil Defense had actually received a document containing a security plan sent by Vale, while stating that the document was "an abridged version" and that the municipality did not did not do it. because it does not even have a server structure with knowledge of dams to badyze it accurately. "Licenses are granted by the state, the mayor only gives his consent," he said at a press conference Friday afternoon. The official also said that Vale had not trained the population. However, the company said that there was training on June 16 last year with the community and another on October 23 with the employees.

Brazilian law stipulates that society must promote internal training, at most each time. six months and keep records of activities. It should also provide technical support to potentially affected municipalities in the drafting and development of municipal emergency plans, as well as the installation of sirens and other emergency mechanisms. alert to alert the community in case of emergency. Vale says he had the sirens, but admitted last week that he was not ringing because they were "engulfed" by the mud, which in theory would put pressure on the company for that. it presents the siren system in its other dams.

Despite the tragedies of Mariana and Brumadinho, the miners have until June 2019 to install a 24-hour video surveillance on the high-risk mining dams – Vale had already installed them in Brumadinho, fulfilling the resolution of ANM who is 2017, two years after the tragedy of Mariana. This equipment, which must be stored in the mines for at least ninety days, facilitated search and rescue work in Brumadinho.

The impact of the tragedy is such that the Bolsonaro government came to power by criticizing the barriers of control of economic enterprises to modulate the discourse and admit that there are legal and personal problems. "We are very good at legislation, but we are very bad at monitoring, we have to watch, that's all, there is not much to say," said the vice president. President Hamilton Mourão in an interview with EL PAÍS. "General Marshall, who was Chief of Staff of the US Army during World War II, said that for every dollar of salary a professional soldier, ten cents corresponded to orders given and ninety cents at the inspection.